thomtg

[...]

I would begin at the beginning: For the New Intellectual. I think this is the book that Ayn Rand introduces herself to the general public not as a novelist but as a philosopher. Her editorial choices of what to publish chronologically thereafter builds on this foundation.

[...]

Oh, hell no.

Rand's worst habit was quoting herself, when she should have been quoting either prior thinkers like Aristotle, Spinoza, or Nietzsche or quoting perhaps no one. For the New Intellectual is simply another restatement of her philosophy in full, another Galt's speech in non-fiction form, but with all the appropriate speeches culled from her fiction works in case you missed them the first time.

It's obvious when she wrote it that she didn't realize she would be writing dozens of non-fiction essays over the next few decades to express her ideas explicitly in depth and in non-fiction form. For the New Intellectual is not an introduction, it's more like the summarization of someone who thinks she might disappear tomorrow, and never get her ideas out. There is plenty of justification to read this cramped monograph for its historical interest. And if you were never going to read another word by Rand, it might be a good selection for something like an undergraduate reader of modern philosophers or libertarians.

But Rand didn't die. She had prductive decades ahead of her. She slowly grew out of the habit of quoting herself. Thank God this is one book you never need to read to understand her at all.

I interpret Ayn Rand's culling of the excerpts from her novels as an effort to be more serious about philosophy. She definitely knew she was going to write more, but she first wanted to separate out from her extant writings what were about reality and what were about re-creation of reality. Any journalist, engineer, politician, or academic henceforth could quote her ideas from FTNI instead of from some "mere" novel. So FTNI is like a nonfictional packaging wrapper, wrapping the best of the best of the state of philosophy at the time. And the title essay "FTNI" does a great job wrapping up the whole history of Western Civilization.

The main non-fiction works of Rand I would recommend people go for are:

"Virtue of Selfishness"

"Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal"

"The New Left" (current edition is known as "Return of the Primitive")

I found "Intro to Objectivist Epistemology" very hard to get into. I never finished it.

Later collections like "Philosophy: Who Needs it" and "The Voice of Reason" I also had problems with, due to her bitterness.

As noted, the original of her non-fiction where the articles in "The Objectivist Newsletter", "The Objectivist" and "The Ayn Rand Letter". You can get hardcopy reprints of these 3, but unless you get lucky (as I was) they are a bit pricy. So unless you get lucky, go for the above books.

I would begin at the beginning: For the New Intellectual. I think this is the book that Ayn Rand introduces herself to the general public not as a novelist but as a philosopher. Her editorial choices of what to publish chronologically thereafter builds on this foundation.

About ITOE, this is my fourth reading of it. I vividly remember my first time reading it. It was during a school break, and I was staying at home. The book was almost, just almost, incomprehensible. I remember telling myself at the time to the effect that "You can do it. She wrote it for regular people. Are you not a regular guy? Read, damn it!" I knew I was barely getting 51 percent of it, just enough to say I understood it. There were sentences that made no sense. I read and re-read over and over without any comprehension. And I noted my incomprehension. It was a very unpleasant feeling not to know something. It was the first and only book ever that I took on on my own initiative that I had doubts about my competency to understand. I don't think the thought of giving up ever surfaced, but it was right beneath consciousness, perhaps waiting for a weak moment. Even if giving up wasn't a conscious choice, the thought of whether to continue the reading was ever on my mind. I had to make it a mental purpose to "get through it." I took every excuse to take a break from reading as a test of willpower, almost as a test of how much more frustration I could endure. It was a near-whole-body rebellion. At one point, I was on my back on the carpeted floor, forcing myself to hold the book tight with two hands, eyes looking up, focused on the pages of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, while my feet were stomping the floor, thumping the wall, all the while my torso was doing ab crunches with grunted breaths to hold myself still, to prevent my body from this out-of-body urge to squirm away. When I finished the last page, I threw that book across the room so fast that my dog "thought" we were playing Fetch in the house, and my mom had to shoo both of us outside. That was some feeling on finishing the book. I felt unstoppable; it was like, "Bring it on, World!" That feeling persists to this day.

I like Isaac Asimov's original Foundation trilogy. When I first read them I thought he was describing the history of the Roman Empire. The story matched my Western Civ. history course at the time. I don't like the later sequels and the prequel; the subsequent storyline focused on "humanity" as a collective-galactic being.

I think we are repeating ourselves. I refer you to my Post #240 where I referred you to your dictionary definition for "zero" and then to my interpretation of this relational concept "absence of" in the math context.

I refer you to post #198. There you said -- in some sense, presumably abstract -- that 0 is "the absence of a presumed, existing quantity." So please explain to us why it is fine for you to say 0 is the absence of a quantity, but there is something wrong if I say it.

Have you tried the long multiplication problem I gave you? Which horn of the dilemma did you choose?

1. "Zero" is a quantity............................ [ Qo, given o="Zero" ]

2. "Zero" is an absence of a quantity..... [ (z)(Qz > Aoz) ]

They are not the same, Merlin. I reject 1 and endorse 2.

There is no problem at all with 103x700: drop down 0, drop down 0, 1 carry 2, (7x0 halt; 0 add 2) 2, 7. Writing in reverse order, the product is 72100.

David Ross on Imaginary Unit

Rand and Infinity

Rand on Concept of Nothing

Stephen,

David Ross's explanation of the transformations of complex numbers reminds me of Robert Heinlein's technological weapon of projecting whole worlds 90 degrees into some phantom zone. (See his Have Spacesuit Will Travel.) The explanation is really good and thoroughly understandable. It affirms the view that i indeed designates a technique.

Some choice excerpts:

There are a few other items in the Ross remark about wave, electromagnetic wave, and probability wave in relation to complex numbers. Thanks for the interesting read, Stephen.

I do not see how you can argue that an absence of a quantity is another quantity. Explain that and we'll see if we can explain your derivative objections.

Explain what you mean by "an absence of a quantity" and maybe I will. [...]

Merlin,

I think we are repeating ourselves. I refer you to my Post #240 where I referred you to your dictionary definition for "zero" and then to my interpretation of this relational concept "absence of" in the math context.

So accept it: an absence of a quantity is not another quantity.

[...] [with new bolding emphasis]

[...]

On Rand's conception, a rational man acts selfishly. An irrational man acts unselfishly [or selflessly].

So per Rand, Keating asking Roark to do his work for him was an "unselfish" act?

[...]

Two points:

1. Since ideas are thought by human beings, and while an idea may have been taught down through the ages, there must have been an individual who independently discovered it the first time. (This is not to say that many individuals could not have independently arrived at the same idea.) "2+2=4" as an idea had to be discovered, but since everybody knows it and uses it nowadays, no one remembers who first discovered it. I am crediting Ayn Rand for being the first to discover the cited ideas. But now that I have independently assessed them for myself that they are true, I have adopted them, integrated them, used them, and made them my own--as I have made "2+2=4" mine.

2. So, yes, I think that Keating's asking Roark to design the Cortlandt Homes for him was an unselfish act. Why? Because Keating well knew that a man's achievement is his own, and that any fame that follows is always derivative of that which one has achieved. Keating knew he could not achieve, but he wanted the fame. He desired a consequence contra to its cause. It was a desire for unreality that motivated him--the knowledge of the facts be damned. Since the act was motivated by this irrational desire, against the consent of his mind's rational judgments of causality; therefore, his asking Roark to do the work was an unselfish act.

[...]

Going by this definition, every thief, and robber and murderer would be unselfish too. But I suppose not even their defense lawyer would refer to them as unselfish, even if the lawyer were a Randist.

[...]

Precisely. Going by this definition [of the new concept], every thief, robber, and murderer would be considered unselfish. Observe the complete inversion of this conception of selfishness in contrast to the conventional view--as you say, it is "in complete contradiction to the accepted" meaning of the word. By the conventional view, one often hears that it is the thief or robber or murderer who was selfish and who did not think of anyone else but him. Not if one understands Ayn Rand's alternate conception.

[...]

[...]

What about Roark blowing up the building, potentially endangering other people's lives? Isn't that an act of ruthless egotism too? How can he, from a breach of contract, feel entilted to such an act of destruction? What does this say about the psychological make-up of this "hero" whom Rand created "as man should be"? And how does this act of violence gel with the Randian dogma of non-initiation of violence?

[...]

Great questions! Really great and penetrating. But I cannot answer your questions in the current context because [...]

Tying up some loose ends strictly for myself from Post #26 to get them straight in my mind,

My interpretation of Ayn Rand's new conception of egoism: (For a comparison to an earlier rendering, see Post #61, encoded portion.)

• moral code: [code of values:] a set of abstract principles serving as a system of teleological measurement which grades the choices and actions open to man, according to the degree to which they achieve or frustrate the code's standard of value--whether that standard be life qua man, life qua brute, or pleasure, or death.
  
• egoism: the moral code that a man's existence is his to live and enjoy and that rationality is his highest virtue.
  
• altruism: the moral code that a man's existence is to serve other men and that sacrifice is his highest virtue.
  
• rationality: the use of reason as the only means for acquiring knowledge and guiding one's actions.
  
• sacrifice: the giving up of a higher value for the sake of a lower value.
  
• volition: a capacity of man for choosing to think or not.
  
• reason: the faculty of consciousness that a human must choose volitionally to activate in order to think.
  
• self: the faculty of reason in the context of choosing to evaluate.
  
• mind: the faculty of reason in the context of choosing to act.
  
• nonvolitional action: an animalistic nonrational action.
  
• volitionless action: a man's action without volition in the presence of coercion or interference from other men.
  
• volitional action: a human action with volition in the absence of coercion and interference from other men.
  
• freedom: the absence of coercion and interference from other men (a.k.a. liberty:).
  
• A reflex action is nonmotivated by any conscious self (e.g., digestion, hiccup).
  
• An animal action is motivated 100 percent by self-interest.
  
  • In a situation without freedom,
    • A coerced man has no choice but to act nonselfishly (without the self).
      
    • A tyrant acts selflessly or unselfishly (against the self).
      

    [*]In a situation with freedom,

    • A rational man acts selfishly (pro self, with the assent of the conceptual mind).
      
    • An irrational man acts selflessly or unselfishly (against the self).
      
    • A rational but erroneous man acts selflessly (mistakenly against the self).
      

  [*]self-interest: that which relates to the means for gaining or keeping one's values.

  • selfishness: a concern for one's volitional rational self-interest.
    
  • selflessness: a concern for one's volitional irrational self-interest (a.k.a. unselfishness:).
    
  • nonselfishness: a concern for one's volitionless nonrational self-interest.
    

  [*]egoist: one who values his mind, respects its judgments, and respects its nature (e.g., fragility).

  [*]non-egoist: one who disvalues his mind, disrespects its volitional nature, and elevates irrational emotions and desires above rational judgments.

  • hedonist: a non-egoist who takes pleasure as the standard of value.
    
  • altruist: a non-egoist who takes selflessness as the standard of value.
    
    • second-hander: an altruist who depends on the minds of others and sacrifices his life to them.
      
    • power-luster: an altruist who depends on the minds of others and sacrifices their lives to him.
      

"On Rand's conception, a rational man acts selfishly. An irrational man acts unselfishly [or selflessly]."

- - -

Peter Keating asked Howard Roark to design Cortlandt Homes for him. Roark dynamited the Cortlandt-Homes constructions. Why is the former's action irrational, and why is the latter's action rational?

In order to judge a volitional action as rational or irrational, one has to judge the human actor [1] by what he knows and values, and [2] by how he comes to take the action. If he knows that "2+2=4" and chooses to write "4" when the question "what is the sum of 2 and 2?" is posed; then he is acting rationally--and therefore, he is acting selfishly. On the other hand, if, knowing what he knows, he chooses to write any number other than "4" when the same question is asked; then he is acting irrationally, betraying his "self," betraying his own judgments, i.e., his knowledge and values"--and therefore, he is acting selflessly.

Evaluating Keating's action:

Keating's action was irrational.

He knew the facts of reality, but he evaded the evidence and disregarded reason. He bypassed his mind's rational judgments; he dismissed his reasoning self and went with his irrational desires--the desires that were never filtered through reason. He chose to act on this basis. Thus, he acted irrationally. Since a man who acts irrationally, acts unselfishly (or selflessly); therefore, Keating acted against himself in the long run.

Evaluating Roark's action:

Now, what about Howard Roark's action? I am imagining Howard Roark's contractual agreements and his underlying decision process to be as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to benefit from his own action.
   
2. A man's action is a product of his thoughts and purposes (or lack thereof).
   
3. If I design it, then I expect it to be built exactly as designed.
   
4. If [3] is falsified, then by [1] I have the right to withdraw my design from the world.
   
5. If my design is withdrawn from the world, then by [2] nothing dependent on it can or shall exist.
   
6. If by [4] I have right to withdraw my design from the world and by [5] nothing dependent on it can or shall exist, then I have the right to demolish that which is dependent on my design.
   
7. To work productively, a man must exercise his rights.
   
8. A willful, deliberate breach of contract is an initiation of force.
   

Since Roark was a man of integrity and since he truly esteemed himself and his thoughts, he would act on his judgments; that is to say, he would act rationally.

When the design to Cortlandt Homes was delivered to Peter Keating, Roark expected that the former was to honor the contract by building it exactly as he had designed it. It was not honored. [3] was falsified. His reasoning mind judged that by [6] he gained the right to demolish the Cortlandt-Homes constructions. His mind also judged that by [7] he must do so.

Roark chose to act on that judgment. Not to have acted, not to have demolished the Cortlandt Homes would have been to betray the very faculty of consciousness that gave rise to his architectural creations, i.e., to betray himself, to betray his mind, his fountainhead. Thus, in dynamiting Cortlandt Homes, Roark acted selfishly. Not to do so would have been an act of selflessness.

Before dynamiting the Cortlandt Homes, Roark planned carefully and sought Dominique's help to lure the lone night watchman away from harm's way. Thus no one was intentionally hurt by his action. Dominique got hurt only because she was too good at being an alibi for him. The demolition was an effect of a prior, intentional breach of contract, which by [8] was the initiation of violence. Dynamiting Cortlandt Homes therefore was both an act of self-defense and an act of selfishness.

[...]

The fact that infinity and i require a course of action does not imply they are courses of action.

"Zero," I contend, is another such concept of method; its psycho-epistemological existence calls for a certain mathematical course of action, namely, to halt operating.

I disagree; it is a concept of quantity. I acknowledge that you and Bissell construe zero to mean "halt operating." I just think it is a bizarre notion that cripples commutativity in arithmetic and much else in mathematics, like I said here and here.

Merlin,

I illustrated for you a facsimile of "infinity." I gave you "etc." Whenever you say "et cetera" or "and so forth," you are bidding a consciousness to repeat some course of action to arrive at your point. You are designating by the word or phrase a mental existent. "Infinity" refers not to metaphysical existents but to mental courses of action. Ask a child to add 1 to the biggest number he can think of. He will get a bigger number. Ask him again to add 1 to that number to get another, bigger number. Ask him to repeat the operation again and again. Soon he will grasp the concept that the process of getting the biggest number never stops. This process of repeating operations is an instance of the concept of "infinity."

I do not see how you can argue that an absence of a quantity is another quantity. Explain that and we'll see if we can explain your derivative objections.

[...]

"Concept of method" is not a common term and Rand's use of it in ITOE2 raises questions. She writes, "Concepts of method are formed by retaining the distinguishing characteristics of the purposive course of action and of its goal, while omitting the particular measurements of both" (ITOE2, 36). In the next paragraph she says logic is the fundamental concept of method. In the Appendix of ITOE2 she calls infinity and the imaginary number i (square root of -1) concepts of method.

This suggests an inconsistency or more than one meaning. Logic is a method, but infinity and i are not methods. Nor are they "courses of action." One might say they arise using a method, but that implies a second meaning of "concept of method", one too broad to be useful IMHO.

Merlin,

Do you recall a lecture some years ago by David Ross where he walked his listeners through the introspective process of arriving at the concept of "infinity"? The process of getting there required a purposive mental course of action. And so is i, which calls for a concise series of math operations toward the goal of a result. "Logic" is a concept of method because it calls for a certain mental course of action to arrive at noncontradictory identification of the facts of reality. "Recipe" is a concept of method because it calls for a certain existential course of action toward the goal of delicious foods. "Computer program" is another concept of method which encapsulates the frozen intelligence of men into the form of machine instructions, etc. And "etc." too is a concept of method because it calls for the reader to repeat some prior course of action toward an inductive conclusion. There is but one genus that covers all of these concepts: "method," or synonymously, "technique."

"Zero," I contend, is another such concept of method; its psycho-epistemological existence calls for a certain mathematical course of action, namely, to halt operating.

Of course, if a word does have two meanings that are complete inversions of each other, then the two meanings cannot both be true. That is, at least one must be false.

Thom,

This had escaped me.

This is incorrect. Once concept cannot be the opposite concept, but the same word can legitimately stand for both, depending on how and where it is used.

Here is a very good example. The word "bad."

It normally has a negative meaning until Michael Jackson uses it.

[...]

Michael,

Thanks for taking a closer look at my post. I appreciate your concern for precision.

You and I are actually in agreement. I was trying to raise the issue of discerning two meanings in the process of using the same visual-auditory symbol. "Meaning" in this sense designates the mental abstraction which, when mentally imposed on a v-a symbol, turns the former into a concept and the latter into a word. Of course we can impose multiple meanings to a v-a symbol, even completely inverted meanings.

Outside of the psycho-epistemological context just mentioned, Ayn Rand takes "meaning" epistemologically to designate a relationship, relating a mental concept to its units of existents--the referents. This is how she distinguishes her theory from the nominalists, who reject the existence of concepts; from the conceptualists, who take the relation "meaning" to point to inner mental ideas (e.g., John Locke's); from the extreme realists, who point to objects of another realm; and from moderate realists, who point to intrinsic existents with a common metaphysical essence.

So yes, I agree with you that "the same word can legitimately stand for both [concepts (or meanings)], depending on how and where it is used." And when a word so used has opposite meanings, it is equally the writer's responsibility as well as the reader's to discern which one among the meanings that the word is to be imposed and understood. A crucial v-a symbol in the writings of Ayn Rand, for example, is "selflessness." It has two meanings. One is commonly and conventionally accepted, which is false; and the other is newly discovered by AR and is a correction to the old. (For a definition of each concept, see the encoded portion of Post #61.) Thus, it would be irresponsible for a reader to affix to a word an opposite meaning unintended by the writer and then to find spurious faults in the writings. This irresponsibility is captured in the usual advice to heed the principle of charity. Unfortunately for some, the meaning of that advice has also been completely misunderstood. (See, for example, Post #66.)

[...]

Answer this: why celebrate a child's birthday? Why shake hands when you meet people? Why have New Year's, and Christmas, and July Fourth? Why hold doors for strangers? Why wave goodbye? These are all "pointless" formalities.

Ceremony is like art, it concretizes our values. It is part of what makes us not dumb animals nor soulless robots but happy humans.

Nice thought, Ted. How would you define "ceremony"? While it cannot be a species of "artwork," it seems to have some CCD as you suggested.

News Update:

The Google blog of Dr. George Reisman is no longer classified as a spam blog and has been unlocked for posting and editing. His side of the story is newly posted here.

He said he has learned his lesson and is currently porting the blog's contents away from Google's reach. The ending paragraph of the message asks for readers' help on how to export the links:

If you want to see how a "stolen concept" fallacy grows unchecked to become a mainstream philosophical theory of mind and a basis for modern neuroscience, check out this cartoon series on the epistemology of representationalism.

Did you ever notice there is something very strange about this world of ours.

Really? Like what?

Thom, that's a lot of words, there. (So here are a lot of words back at ya!) I still don't see your point with the M statements. If I paraphrase them to be more exact, they all say "if H was true, I just added (or will add) a dollar". That statement is always true if we accept that the person will do what he says. So, the 2nd line in the truth table, "H was true but I didn't add a dollar", does not occur. So, I don't see a problem. Unless I'm still missing your point.

[...]

Laure, my point with the M statements is that, the person reading them always judges and acts on them as hypothetical statements regardless of how he judges and acts on the H statements in the opposite role.

Notice from the evidence of your coded program that you processed the H hypothetical statements by means of translating them into material implicated statements. You converted each H statement into an either-or+(not) function, and you judged its truth piecemeal, and then you acted by calling it either "true" or not. But when you switched role to evaluate the M statements, you initially did not believe the M statements to be hypothetical statements, because you could not seem to evaluate them truth functionally. And yet, the dollars kept being added on the table. So, implicitly you were not processing these statements as material implicated statements but as fully hypothetical statements.

Thus what I would like to know is, what if you bring back that same process of judging and acting on hypothetical statements in the manner of processing the M statements to the original task of judging and acting of the H statements? Then given what I said in Post #25 about the truth and falsity of hypothetical statements, which statements among the H statements would you call out "true"?

[...]

I re-read what you wrote about the "paradox of entailment". I don't think that modern logicians would conclude "the U.S. economy negotiates one trillion decisions per microsecond" from a false premise (P & not P). Modern logicians would say that "(P & not P) --> Q" is always true, because the antecedent is always false, but that doesn't tell you whether Q is true or false. It could be either. When we say that the argument is "valid," all we are saying is that Q is derivABLE from "P and not P." Yeah, sure, in a world where P and not P are both true, it would follow that Q was true. Now I dare you to prove to me that "P and not P" (i.e. Check Your Premises!), and if you can do it, I'll grant you that Q is true! I think it just means that "if contradictions exist, then everything's true!"

[...]

I am not claiming anything more than the simple fact that modern logicians take the conclusion from any contradiction to be "valid." My point is about the prescription that follows from the paradox of entailment. For you see, as logicians understands it, since man's deductive method is entailment, and because they take entailment to be truth functional, which turns out to be paradoxical, their prescription becomes: don't trust reason, don't trust knowledge.

[...]

Just like with an algebra problem -- once I encode it in a formula, I don't have to think about the meaning until I get my final answer and then check it for reasonableness. Say I'm trying to calculate the average speed of a car, and I get 1000 mph -- then I need to go back and check my work! But while doing the calculation, I don't need to keep anything in mind about the meaning of the problem I'm solving. I start out with my "story problem," encode it into a string of symbols, pop down into the realm of pure syntax, manipulate the symbols, then pop back up to the realm of semantics to check the result, keeping in mind the meaning of what I was trying to calculate. So, while it's not a dichotomy, I think it is very useful to be able to examine the analytic or syntactic aspect of a problem, independent of the meaning.

It is very interesting to me that you take the view that symbolization is a shortcut method to deduction because it allows you to blank out meaning in the intervening process. I can see it being useful in some contexts, but I cannot take it as a general principle. For even in arithmetics and algebra we normally make sure we don't divide by a variable that may turn out to be zero. This act, to me, is a counterexample to your general principle. It shows that no matter how much complex symbolization we build our math or logical statements, we should always take cognizant of the material meanings of the symbols. If we don't, though we may make all the deductions and simplications and applying all the rules of equivalences, we may come out with errors. And I believe this is exactly what happened with the logician's evaluations of the H statements.

As to environmentalism in general, as long as it sticks with common-sense community initiatives and individual choices that supposedly help the environment (using energy efficient bulbs, recycling, etc.), I see no problem with it. Best not to paint everybody with the same brush. Not every environmentalist is a member of Earth First.

I agree with the sentiment about the everyday concerns about not littering or not wasting electricity and water bills (economizing). But then people with those everyday concerns should be careful to identify and call themselves "environmentalists." "Environmentalism" has a certain core set of principles that may only align with those everyday concerns at the most superficial, tangential level.

Thom, I still don't see what you're getting at with the "M" statements, but I think I understand your problem with statements such as HP4. Please see the thread I started, "Question on Conditionalizing", and visit the Wikipedia links mentioned there. I think you're a fan of "strict implication", which means that we look at the meaning of the P's and Q's and ask ourself if the P being true would in any way cause the Q to be true, and if not, we consider "P --> Q" to be false, even though the normal symbolic logic we learn in school says that it evaluates to true if P is false. I don't see any problem with conventional symbolic logic. We just need to define our terms so everyone is on the same page. In the link in the other thread on "paradoxes", the author mentions the idea that an argument with false premises can be logically "valid" although it is not logically "sound." I can go along with that, and suspect that you can, too. It's just a matter of defining our terms.

Laure,

Thank you for referring me to the forum thread on the topic of "Question of Conditionalizing" and its many linked articles therein. I have read these articles before. Although I am not a fan of "strict implication," I can see why you think I am, considering that it is an attempt at cleaning up some paradoxical messes with "material implication" in modern logic. That should say something positive about the discipline, that it has some concern for the imprecision in mapping hypothethical statements to material implications. Since you have a better understanding of why I have a problem with HP4 (and HP5, and HP6 for another reason), how many dollars should there be on the table? (Post #1)

I think that the MIx statements, as understood and acted on by any person in the scenario, falsify material implication and strict implication. By this I mean that Lines 1, 3, and 4 of the truth table shared by both connectives are not what constitute or establish the truths of the MIx statements. Their truths entirely depend on the denial of Line 2 if truth tables have to be referred to at all. In other words, the denial of falsity is not the same as the affirmation of truths with regard to truth tables in dealing with hypothetical statements.

What does it mean to assert a hypothetical proposition by means of a hypothetical statement? First of all, it never means asserting the component propositions. The antecedent and consequent are neither said to be true nor false by themselves. It is their relationship that is being asserted. A Hypothetical assertion is an assertion of a logical relationship. It is the basis of conditional proofs; assuming something true, what may then be true.

Secondly, it means that the assertion can be false only if its consequent (and only its consequent) is contradicted by actual non-hypothetically asserted facts. This is not to say that the consequent in itself, and independent of the antecedent cannot be false. But it is to say that for the relationship to be falsified, the consequent must be contradicted because of its dependence on the antecedent. This fact implies the rejection of both Lines 3 and 4 of the truth table as the basis for asserting the truth of the hypothetical statement when the antecedent is found indepently to be false.

Finally, it means that the assertion can be true only when it can be denied that the consequent contradicted actual non-hypothetically asserted facts. This is not to say the consequent must be found independently to be true, but it is to say that the denial of the consequent in its dependence on the antecedent is a fact. This denial implies the rejection of both Lines 1 and 3 of the truth table as the basis for asserting the truth of the hypothetical statement when the consequent is found independently to be true.

Thus, a hypothetical statement asserts a relationship, and its truth or falsity depends on the existence or absence of this relationship, not on the falsity of the (independent) antecedent, nor on the truth of the (independent) consequent.

Material implication and strict implication rely on Lines 1, 3, and 4. They rely on the independent and commutative evaluations of the antecedent and consequent. And they disregard altogether the actual relationship of dependence that is being asserted in evaluating its truth. Hence, the use of truth functional connectives--both material implication and strict implication--in dealing with hypothetical propositions becomes paradoxical in practice.

Now, my criticism for calling inferences from false premises as "valid" has been noted in the root post. Noteworthy also is the fact that David Kelley never draws out the so-called distinction between a "valid" argument and a "sound" argument in his treatment of logic. (See TAOR Ch. 4). The source for this valid-sound distinction, it seems to me, is from the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. (See ITOE pp. 112-118)

How do we know when we are perceiving reality Objectively? [...]

Perception is veridical. The above question takes "objectivity" as a "stolen" concept. It is only when we conceptualize something that the issue of objectivity enters the epistemological scene. As I have stated elsewhere, seeing is believing; understanding, by contrast, now that requires error checking and volitional assenting.

[...]

Michael,

I am chuckling at Gary Merrill's criticism not because it doesn't have points, but because it indicates a bias of method. Contemporary analytic philosophic method typically doesn't ask: is this true?, but is this well argued and well sourced?

First, there was no one in 1966 or even until the 1990's that could say much about the truth or falsity of the claims in IOE. Of course, IOE wasn't proven or even terribly "well argued" in the conventional sense. Rand stuck her neck out and said something definitive about about the human conceptual faculty. It's up to us to evaluate it against the alternatives, the facts of reality and the internal structure of her system.

Contrast this with the awe (deservedly so but with blinders on) that much of the academic world has of Nozick, who would brilliantly argue one side of an argument. Then a few years later would brilliantly argue against his own conclusions.

This reminds me of physicists who complained about the inaccessibility of Feynman diagrams. After all, they weren't "proven or sourced". Well, it took Freeman Dyson 4 years to put them on mathematically solid footing. Why didn't Feynman do it? Well, it's possible that he couldn't, but it's also possible that it would have been a colossal waste of his time. But think of what would have happened if Feynman had just sat on it: the world would have been deprived of an integral part of its current language for describing electron-electron interactions.

It's too bad Rand didn't have the luxury of not using polemics. The academic world would have had a field day with no response from her. Rand knew the response her work would get from academia and acted accordingly.

Jim

I read this Merrill piece when it was in its original site, and my conclusion then was as is now. Like you stated, there was no acknowledgement on the substance of ITOE and whether it was true. Moreover, the analysis of the A-S dichotomy by Quine focused on synonymy; his was an argument from nonessentials. Whether the whole philosophical world gooh-ed and gaah-ed over its trivial dismissal of the dichotomy is a judgment on contemporary philosophy's fixation on irrelevance. Merrill did not see any of this.

Amusingly enough, a humongous amount of selectivity was involved in him famously 'putting the microphone' in his character's minds. One misconception about Joyce is that he was a obscurantist who was deliberately incoherent in order to cash in on social irrationality. This was not a man, however, who automatically wrote his novels. He labored over his novels - Ulysses and Finnegans Wake in particular - to a degree few other writers ever have. To call them works of love would be to degrade the phrase. His novels are examples of 'controlled chaos.' As has been noted before, it takes an incredibly deliberate effort (and more than a little skill) to believably recreate the spontaneity of consciousness. He was as exacting in his work as Rand was in hers.

If I admire his skill and dedication, however, I immensely dislike the task which he puts his skills to. Here you have a great writer who devotes his mind entirely to complete and total naturalism. His novels are entirely about the non-purposeful, the accidental, and the journalistic in life. He devoted himself to uncovering how the consciousness of various people operates. I feel a great sadness when I read his work and realize how he devoted his life to an awful subject.

The lesson to be learned here, children, is that subject and execution are equally important spheres of literature. If what you're writing about is unimportant, it doesn't really matter how skillfully you recreate it. And if your writing is abominable, it doesn't really matter how exalted your subject is -- you'll only end up insulting it by recreating it so poorly.

You have strong introspective power, Michelle. That is a skill very much desired in fiction writing. In writing stories, the writer has to hold a tremendous amount of integrations in full focus in order to invent actions and inner dialogs among his created characters. Your discerning nuances in Joyces's skills versus his tasks, and your admiration for one but not the other, presuppose your having the standing premise in your subconscious to integrate constantly what you learn to maintain unit economy. Keep it up. I look forward to your future novels.

By the way, the Doug Shaw review was a surprise snigger. It started with "644" and wallowed into ! OMG! :frantics:

Thank you, Merlin, for engaging in philosophy and not arithmetics. I will answer you as soon as you answer me, under which of the categories does "nothing" fit? Meanwhile, you can take a look at your own dictionary definition of zero on page 10, Post #188, and my ontological interpretation of "zero" on the same page, Post #198.

“Nothing” is used in various ways. I can’t put it in one category to cover all cases. “Nothing” might be used to mean the absence of a substance or an action (using Aristotle’s categories). Some uses might even fit other categories. Zero is more specific – the absence of a quantity. So it fits the category quantity. Zero is quantitative. It is as much about quantity as "colorless" is about color.

I’m not sure of your point about post #188. In any case, have a look at your own post #198. There you say that zero denotes “the absence of a presumed, existing quantity”, much like the dictionary.

I’m not sure of your point about post #198. However, if it is “reification of the zero”, I refer you to post #226.

Merlin, I would classify "nothing" and "zero" under the derivative concept "absence," which is a "privative" in Aristotle's view of opposition, and is therefore a "relation"--an epistemological relation between a presumed existent (some entity or quantity) and a conscious awarer. Because of its dependence on a consciousness (man's or animal's), these relations can only be conceptualized by man, in my view, as methodological concepts. (See ITOE Ch. 4 on introspection.) It is the reason why you were ineffectual in placing "nothing" in any one category in reality. And if you had introspected about the nature of "absence" in opposition to the "presence" of a presumed quantity, you would have seen that "zero" too could not be a quantity. On this reasoning, any thinking whatsoever that an absence is another kind of presence in reality (or zero as another quantity, in your case) is to commit radically the fallacy of Reification of the Zero.

Xray,

I do believe you are a reasonable person; for otherwise, I would not have entered into conversation with you. I don't think you are playing games, nor do I think you are vindictive in your remarks. But I think you are in error and don't know that you are. Until I find evidence otherwise, I consider your errors to be innocent errors of knowledge.

With that as preliminaries, let us review:

It is fair to say that we have dealt with the difficulties you had in Post #5 about why Ayn Rand wrote in her pre-writing journal:

You did not realize that there are two meanings to "egoist"--a commonly accepted meaning and a meaning that Rand defined specifically within The Fountainhead--and that when Rand described Peter Keating as an egoist, she had used the commonly accepted meaning.

I discussed this error in Post #12 and in Post #26. To repeat from the latter:

Observe how careful Ayn Rand was and how respectful she was to herself when she wrote in her journal about the character Peter Keating prior to the writing of Second-Hand Lives. Even to herself, and knowing that she was writing in the journal strictly for her eyes only, Rand was careful to say that Peter was an egoist "in the accepted meaning of the word." She was acknowledging the term to herself that there existed a meaning to the word that was accepted widely at the time. But she was not endorsing it to be true, to be correct, in her own mind. She merely recorded the fact of the existence of this meaning.

In publishing the novel The Fountainhead, Rand developed a brand new conception of an "egoist," a man who values his mind and who considers reason as his sole means of knowledge, as his sole guide to action. This was her projection of the ideal man. Howard Roark was this ideal man in this fictional world, not Peter Keating. Roark was the egoist. And in the writing of the novel, the reader is left no doubt which meaning Rand was using. Roark's courtroom speech and all the background facts about him leave no doubt to the discriminating reader about Rand's unequivocal meaning to "egoist." And even to forestall the possibility of a contextual error, Rand noted her usage of the word in the Introduction to the 25th anniversary edition, to make sure the reader to pay attention to her specific use and meaning of the word, and not to be mistaken ever that she was referring to the "accepted meaning of the word."

And because of having this error in your mind, you never did understand my root post Post #1, for you immediately asked in your Post #3:

On Rand's conception, a rational man acts selfishly. An irrational man acts unselfishly.

So per Rand, Keating asking Roark to do his work for him was an "unselfish" act?

When a person chooses to value his mind and respects its volitional nature, he is an egoist.

How is it that Rand called Keating an egoist then?

[...]

It showed me that you did not understand a conclusion in that root post: A rational man acts selfishly, and an irrational man acts unselfishly OR a.k.a. selflessly. It showed me that you were still unsure of the premises for that conclusion. It showed me that you had misunderstood the term "selflessness."

One evidence of that was in the very excerpt about Peter Keating in Rand's pre-writing journal. Rand described Keating as selfless. This did not compute for you. You were stuck on a different notion of "selflessness" that clashed with your certain knowledge that everyone acts to his self-interest.

So rather than trying to understand my post, you stood your ground and denied that anyone could act selflessly. Thus, having never understood the premises, you rejected my conclusion.

And rather than checking your own premise--the premise that selflessness cannot exist in any human action, which is motivated ipso facto by self-interest--you rejected any statement from anybody, living or dead, who would deign to put the two words together. Thus, you cited the same Keating excerpt again, accusing Ayn Rand of contradicting herself, of saying about Keating "a perfect example of a selfless man who is a ruthless unprincipled egotist." (Post #10)

I tried to stop you from making too many hasty conclusions, but I failed. I tried to slow down the cascading errors coming from you by my refraining from discussing altruism with you. "Altruism," I thought, was a concept that required understanding antecedent concepts, such as "duty," "sacrifice," "selfishness" and "selflessness." But you went ahead anyway.

You blasted Rand: "She arbitrarily calls people like Keating who want to profit from others' work 'altruists', while at the same time lambasting 'altruism' as an ideology propagating the exact contrary (putting other people's wishes first) --in short, the semantic chaos Rands creates is evident, but she is not aware of it." (Post #17 and Post #25)

Ironically for me, in the post where I thought you understood me, you actually used my own words to refute me, and I did not realize it at the time. In Post #17, you wrote:

2. So, yes, I think that Keating's asking Roark to design the Cortlandt homes for him was an unselfish act. Why? Because Keating well knew that a man's achievement is his own, and that any fame that follows is always derivative of that which one has achieved. Keating knew he could not achieve, but he wanted the fame. He desired a consequence contra to its cause. It was a desire for unreality that motivated him--the knowledge of the facts be damned. Since the act was motivated by this irrational desire, against the consent of his mind's rational judgments of causality; therefore, his asking Roark to do the work was an unselfish act.

Going by this definition, every thief, and robber and murderer would be unselfish too. But I suppose not even their defense lawyer would refer to them as unselfish, even if the lawyer were a Randist.

The problem with Rand is that she created her own linguistic universe, [...]

So thinking that you understood me, I focused my reply (Post #26)on the linguistic problem. Little did I know that your rebuttal was hidden in that smiley emoticon. For you had rejected my "why" argument in toto and continued on about the contradiction of any action that could be unselfish.

----

So the erroneous conclusions piled on and accumulated. Proving that you did not understand the root post and Post #12, you asked other readers several times whether there was anything "rational" in "a subjective value judgement." (Post #25, Post #29, post #33) You maintained that " 'rational self interest', or 'irrational self interest' is simply a matter of personal preference, i.e., subjective value judgment." (Ibid.)

You blasted others for believing that a selfless man could exist. You offered a challenge (Post #36):

[...] I'm afraid Ayn Rand's theory of the "selfless man" has no epistemological leg to stand on at all. For such a man does not exist - not even in her own fiction.

If you believe a selfless man exists, feel free present this human being to the posters here. We'll then do some litmus test on the alleged selflessess and see what remains of it.

Rand's theory is not only in blatant contradiction to obvious facts (i. e. it is based on a fallacy: the false premise of "objective values existing) - it is also in itself contradictory.

Want an an example? Ask and ya shall receive:

Rand verbatim calls Peter Keating "a perfect example of a selfless man".

Not let's look at Rand's definition of "selflessness" [altruism]

Atlas Shrugged, p. 323: Ivy Starnes to Dagny.

"That was our plan. It was based on the principle of selflessness [i. e. "altruism"] . It required men to be motivated not by personal gain, but by love for their brothers." (end quote)

Now with Keating being identified as "selfless" [i e. an "altruist"] , it logically follows that (again, according to Rand) he is motivated not by personal gain, but by love for his brothers." Right?

Seriously, Brant, do you really believe Keating was motivated by love of his "brother" (= fellow human being) Howard Roark and not by personal gain, when he asked him to do his work for him?

He was motivated by personal gain, wasn't he, Brant? It sticks out a mile.

So without realizing it, Rand herself, in her character Keating, has provided the illustration that altruistic human beings don't exist. She herself neutralizes the very opposition she created: which places the "altruist "group on one one side if the trench, and the "selfish" group on the other.

I'll use the term "collapsing opposition" for what happened here.

[...]

Bottom line: both Keating and Roark were motivated by 100 per cent self interest.

That Rand approved of Roark's self interest while disapproving of Keating's self interest is of no relevance here. It was an entirely personal choice on her part, i. e. a subjective value judgement.

What a fiery blast! It took my breath away. My "Shield of Truth" was nearly blown off.

An error, if not checked, grows and grows. Every accumulated error hinged on your understanding of "selflessness" and its incompatibility with "self-interest": Oh no, there is no such man who is selfless/unselfish. "There is no such thing as an altruistic human being." (Post #36 in bold) There is no such thing as an "objective value." (Post #38) All values are subjective to each person. (Post #68)

----

When I had a chance to comment on your quotation from Ivy Starnes, I decided to address head-on on by showing you that in fact there were different conceptions of "selflessness"--one from the commonly accepted theory; the other, derivative from Rand's theory of egoism. (Post #64)

[...]

You have found a great definition of "selflesness" from Atlas Shrugged, as defined by the character Ivy Starnes. However, Ivy Starnes did not speak for Ayn Rand in the novel. Only through the characters John Galt and other heroes did Rand speak to her readers directly.

Ivy Starnes, by contrast, represented the commonly accepted philosophy of the time period. And her definition of "selflessness," as Rand reported to us in the story, accurately reflected the commonly accepted meaning of the term, "to be motivated not by personal gain, but by love for their brothers." As you have surmised, this is utterly impossible--a contradiction in the very essence of not only human action but any animal action. (See my latest reformulation of the classification of "self-interest" in Post #61.) But Ayn Rand did not endorse this definition; she merely told the readers about it through the voice of the Starnes heiress.

Though you have found a contradiction, the contradiction was not in Ayn Rand's Objectivist ethics. In fact it was she who first identified the very contradiction you are now attributing to her system. It was she who identified the contradiction inherent in any ethical system that disregards the facts of reality, including the reality of human nature, such as self-interest, volition, reason.

If anything is accurate in your assessment, I would say you have identified a big flaw in a great number of moral codes, but the flaw is definitely 100-percent not in egoism. (See the definitions here.)

[...]

But I was mistaken to think you would take back your fiery blast. Instead you innocently misunderstood my post and went on, not noticing distinction between a commonly accepted definition and an endorsed definition, not noticing the existence of two concepts of "selflessness" (and their definitions), which I presented for the third time in a post to Michelle R (Post #61). Thinking that I was merely deflecting an oppositional/opponential definition of "selflessness," you wanted instead to prove three things:

1. "The actions of every [villain] character in the book (EVERY character!) [show] that they are every bit as motivated by self-interest, that is, by believing what is best for themselves, as their [heroic] opponents."

2. "Rand still seems to believe the altruists are not motivated by self-interest. Why she needs to keep up this illusion is quite clear: to promote her philosophy, the altruists are built up as strawmen to be thrashed."

3. "Taggart was no altruist. [Altruists] don't exist, which is why not even Rand was able to present one in a novel, despite her belief that she did. Rand's own artifically constructed opposition between the "altruists" and the "selfish" group collapses right in front of the reader's eyes."

----

So here we are. I stated at the beginning that I think your errors are innocent errors of knowledge. These can be corrected, provided you are willing to help yourself. Of course, you need to be convinced that you are in error. Others have tried and given up.

The source of all your present errors is your misunderstanding of "selflessness." Once you correct this error, I think you will see that the villain characters Keating and Jim Taggart in a totally new light, and you will see Roark as the Randian hero he should be. But the first task is getting to "selflessness" exclusively, totally, without distraction, without side conclusions, without jumping ahead.

Merlin,

Others in this discussion treat pure math and applied math as if the issue were content, not intent, especially when they claim there is no correspondence between pure math and reality.

That is precisely what I question. If there were no correspondence, pure math only applies to reality in some cases by accident, but not by correspondence.

I believe this kind of reasoning is flawed.

I am surprised you have not noticed this.

Michael

[...]

I have noticed it and registered my disagreement here ( near the end) and other threads as well. It just hasn't been my focus.

Good catch, Michael.

Merlin's response at Post #68 as directed from his Post #180 (above) does not address your query.

The post shows a misunderstanding of the current proposal on the ontology of the zero. Contrary to the assertion, anything that is unitized by man can be counted (i.e. measured), not just entities. I'm sure every child would be surprised to be told he couldn't count paper lengths (an attribute) or musical durations (a relation) or dance steps (an action); and that he wouldn't be able to learn negative numbers unless he removed all thoughts related to perceptual entities. For according to Merlin's view, "some of mathematics makes no claims about reality." On this view, since on the Kelvin standard of temperature, there are no negative degrees; therefore, some math makes no claim about how to count temperatures in reality.

So, either those degrees, attributes, relations, and actions are not about reality (since children cannot count them), or this is an admission that "some" mathematics (e.g., "pure mathematics") is beyond reality. Either way, it does not register with your query: "If there were no correspondence, pure math only applies to reality in some cases by accident, but not by correspondence."

To reiterate from my Post #105,

Some people would prefer to set up an arbitrarily defined set of rules ("axioms") for manipulating symbols and then play with them, occasionally exclaiming in great surprise when their arbitrarily based manipulations produce a pattern that applies to the real world -- than to acknowledge that mathematics is an ~abstraction from~ the real world, and that, to be valid, every rule and procedure must be based on or ultimately derivable from a concrete mental operation directed toward real objects and their attributes, actions, and relations.

[...]

[...] And by this standard, axioms in science (including math, philosophy, chemistry, etc.) cannot be arbitrarily defined. They must have a basis in facts of reality. Mathematics in particular is a science of measurement. On this conception, the philosophy of mathematics needs to take cognizant both of man the measurer and of that which can be measured, in establishing criteria for determining truths in mathematics. [...]

And from Ted's Post #142,

There is no such thing as "pure mathematics" as in mathematics not instantiated by a human mind. It is the fact that humans can attempt to realize contradictions that leads to the so called problems of pure mathematics.

[...]

Mathematics isn't pure. It doesn't do itself. [...]

I believe Roger and I stipulated what it means for something to be "undefined" earlier. (See Post #138 and Post #178.)

What are you trying to say? That "undefined" should be interpreted as "not operable or calculable by any process", like you say in #138? That is precisely the meaning of my remark about the consequences of Roger's stipulations for long division and long multiplication. If one encounters 0+0 or 0*0 in these algorithms, Roger's stipulation implies these expressions are incalculable and execution ends abnormally.

Ontologically speaking, as nothing is not another something, so zero is not another quantity. To think so is to commit the fallacy of Reification of the Zero.

If zero is not a quantity, then what is it? Under which of Aristotle's 10 categories does it fit? As for reifying zero, see post #226.

Thank you, Merlin, for engaging in philosophy and not arithmetics. I will answer you as soon as you answer me, under which of the categories does "nothing" fit? Meanwhile, you can take a look at your own dictionary definition of zero on page 10, Post #188, and my ontological interpretation of "zero" on the same page, Post #198.

Xray,

4 things to discuss:

1 Selflessness as defined conventionally and otherwise

2 Whether Ivy Starnes spoke for Rand

3 Whether Keating, Taggart were selfless

4 Whether Roark was selfish in blowing up Cortlandt Homes

I have the general impression that there is resistance all around to making clear meanings for concepts of method as opposed to concepts of ontology, with the resistance most strongly seen (at least to me) to making clear where the two interconnect.

Michael

I completely agree, Michael.

Ontologically speaking, as nothing is not another something, so zero is not another quantity. To think so is to commit the fallacy of Reification of the Zero.