Samson Corwell

On December 29, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Brant Gaede said:

But not necessarily initiation of force imposition.

--Brant

are you trying to have your rights and eat them too?

I don't belief in rights as important components of a moral theory.

On December 21, 2016 at 0:55 AM, Roger Bissell said:

She held consciousness to be awareness of something that exists independently of one's awareness - not the creation of something of which one is then aware. Existence is independent of consciousness - not dependent upon consciousness. Rand advocated the former, and she said Kant advocated the latter: Primacy of Existence vs. Primacy of Consciousness.

The way I read Kant, however, is that *both* consciousness/mind and existence/reality are unknowable things-in-themselves, lurking in the "noumenal realm," and that whatever nature they have, they interact in such a way that the *product* of that interaction is the world as we experience it, the world of appearance, the "phenomenal realm." He believed in identity and cause-and-effect, but he also said we can't go beyond sense experience and whatever we can build from that. (He was a very accomplished physical scientist and theorist prior to becoming a philosopher.) So, he shied away from ascribing specific qualities to mind and reality, apart from what we *observe* through perceptual observation and introspection.

This interactive process *is* how we know the world, and the world "as we know it" - and ourselves "as we know ourselves" - really *are* built up or "constructed" from such interactions. However, it's not that either reality or our mental faculties are constructs. They are real. The *product of their interaction* - things and selves as we know them - is the form in which we are aware of those things and selves. So, it is *experience* that is the construct, the *form* of our awareness of the world.

Kant got it half right, and his Copernican Revolution really just latched onto the other side of a false dichotomy: the mind determines/constructs out of reality the world we experience vs. reality determines what our minds experience. Instead, together, they *both* determine/construct the world and the self we experience. The world and the self are the forms in which we are aware, through their interaction, of reality and the mind. (And by "mind," I mean merely a conscious living organism's brain and nervous system.)

I don't think this qualifies as "negating consciousness as such." But if the realist elements of Kant's philosophy are rejected (identity and causality), leaving just the idealist Primacy of Consciousness, "construction of reality," then sure, Kant was fundamentally mistaken. And I think that is the Orthodox Objectivist interpretation of him. So, take your pick.

REB

Fid she ever read Oakeshott?

On December 21, 2016 at 5:21 PM, merjet said:

Place your fingers on a chunk of ice or a hot stove. Is your awareness of the ice or stove "brain/mind generated" or "brain/mind transmitted"?

Neither.

On December 17, 2016 at 11:49 PM, Roger Bissell said:

I agree. And when we look at Kant's explicitly stated purpose and goal, we find something quite different from the "all-destroyer" fountainhead of statist totalitarianism that the Randians allege him to be.

Throughout his Critical Philosophy, Kant was working from what he took to be an inescapable premise—Hume’s notion of the cognitively unbridgeable gap between knowledge and true reality—but he was not a nihilist-skeptic destroyer. Instead, Kant attempted a major pushback against the deadly effects of Hume’s extreme skepticism, in order to save what for him were two crucial values of Western culture: science and ethics. Kant was thus actually a conservative, moderating development in the face of Hume’s disintegrative skepticism.

In contrast to the Disintegrative stance of Hume, Kant affirmed causality and lawful connections in nature and the ability of the human mind to know them, as well as the ability of the mind to build up systematic bodies of knowledge in science and philosophy from a base in experience. As Sciabarra notes, “Kant recognized that human knowledge constitutes a coherent interconnected whole” (2000, 55). Kant also emphatically insisted that cognition, including logic and system-building—and therefore, all the sciences, including mathematics, metaphysics, and physics—are limited to, or based on, facts in the realm of experience.

In terms of substantive philosophy, Kant was the beleaguered defender of mainstream Enlightenment values, while “Hume’s views were revolutionary, far more revolutionary than he himself realized” (Jones 1969b, 12). As Jones further clarifies, "Hume regarded reason as merely an instrument for detecting relations
among ideas; reason can tell us nothing . . . about the real world. . . .There is no rationale in nature to which the rational mind of man conforms. Hume in effect was driving a wedge between reason and nature. . . . Among Hume’s contemporaries Kant was almost alone in recognizing the destructive force of this attack on reason. . . . Kant was deeply committed to the Enlightenment ideal. Hence he was deeply disturbed by Hume’s argument." (12–13) In other words, Kant was a reactionary rather than a radical - or, rather, a thinker using methodologically "radical" means to argue for "reactionary" or status quo social-cultural values.

Ironically, Kant, in trying to undo Hume’s baleful influence, stumbled into the same pitfall as the conservatives in their fight against left-liberalism and socialism. What Rand wrote about Kant was thus actually more appropriately directed at Hume, and what she said about Kant’s opponents was at least as applicable to him, since Hume won with Kant’s help. Kant conceded Hume’s basic premise, and gave away the ballgame, just as the conservatives have more recently in relation to the liberals, progressives, and socialists. Like Rand, Kant similarly railed against the ineffectual or harmful attempts of his predecessors to protect major values—in his case, the mainstream Enlightenment values of reason, science, and religious morality—even while advocating an unconventional intellectual framework. Kant set forth his Critical Philosophy in an attempt to provide a solid basis for those values—values which very few people at the time regarded as controversial, but which were being thrown into skeptical doubt by the intellectual gridlock between the rationalists and the empiricists.

Unlike Rand, however, Kant did not have the protective shield of a consistent, reality-based set of premises to carry into battle. Instead, he conjured up a witch’s brew of Humean irrationalism and Platonic-Leibnizian rationalism that did more harm than good. As Jones (1969b) notes, “[Kant] realized that to answer Hume some compromise was necessary and in this compromise he proposed to save as much as he could. Ultimately, however, Kant made many more concessions to anti-rationalism than he realized. . . . Kant’s philosophy thus constitutes one of the fundamental turning points in the history of Western thought” (13). Ironically, then, Kant fell short in much the same way in attempting to stem the tide of Humean irrationalism as did the twentieth-century political conservatives in their efforts to hold back the advances of left-liberal statism. It’s intriguing to speculate that, had Rand been Kant’s colleague in the late 1700s, she might well have blasted him in the same way she did the American right in the mid-1900s, and for the same reasons. His flawed arguments failed to “conserve”—not just preserve, but rationally validate and defend—reason, science, and morality, just as those of the political conservatives failed to “conserve” (validate and defend) political freedom, capitalism, and rugged individualism. With friends like Kant and the conservatives, who
needs enemies!

Had Rand and her colleagues expressed their justifiable disdain for Kant’s shortcomings in a manner similar to the way they raked political conservatives over the coals, that would have sufficed to make the point, without needing to engage in histrionics and hyperbole. (Full stop.) Instead, however, we have been subjected to over fifty years of trumped-up charges against Kant, some of which conflict with one another, some of which are context-dropping distortions, and many of which are simply not correct.

I discuss some of these in my 2013 JARS review of Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis. (The preceding comments were adapted from that review essay.)

REB

What was this "pitfall"?

12 hours ago, Mikee said:

This reads almost like the definition of moral relativism.

What an Objectivist answer. I didn't say what is right is different for different people (oddly enough, Objectivism does say so (sort of)).

On 12/25/2016 at 8:49 AM, Brant Gaede said:

"Imposed on others"? Laws which do not initiate force and laws that do. Who is objecting to what now? And if everybody of every stripe is imposing, imposing is morally and practically neutral. I suggest a little elaboration so the real subject is obvious. We could, however, propose depose of the impose.

No, every law is an imposition of value on those who disagree with it. Just as the current system is an imposition on libertarians, a libertarian system would be an imposition on non-libertarians who would find their views excluded from the public sphere.

On 12/22/2016 at 8:41 PM, anthony said:

Quite - an entirely arbitrary construct. I mean, where is the physical, biological, psychological, metaphysical or epistemological evidence that men are separately unique and autonomously motivated-directed? Clearly happiness for one is happiness for all, and vice-versa. When one thinks, we all think. (and vice-versa). Rational egoism? Ridiculous, arbitrary idea.

A utilitarian standard may be the wrong one, but is none the less NOT morally subjectivist. Unless, you are using "subjectivist" in the Randian sense of "that which I have no other criticism for".

False antecendent (I think).

"f the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand (for instance when a person is in some imminent danger, and there is no other possible remedy), then it is lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another’s property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery." — Thomas Aquinas

On 12/4/2016 at 10:48 AM, anthony said:

I think it's an offshoot of 'special interest groups' and therefore, collectivism. When you, the state, start the rot by deeming by arbitrary, utilitarian or subjectively emotional 'standards' that certain 'groups' should be favored over others, it has to in practice extend to the economy, and select factions in industry and business. As a businessman, you're either in or out and your survival often depends on going along and getting in. I think the corruption is a two-way process, government of business and business of government, with no one prepared to call a halt.

And is egoism any less "arbitrary"?

Well, the desired separation is certainly impossible, but for different reasons. Political institutions dictate what form a society will take, so there really isn't any separation between "government" on one hand and "the economy" on the other. In laissez-faise, there is a set of laws that outline what is and is not permissible, and these laws are imposed on others who very well may want different ones.

As to "crony capitalism", I do not like to use it. Some call patents an instance of "crony capitalism" and justify this label by stating that patents only exist through "state intervention" when the same is true of normal property. I can also imagine some opponents of laissez-faire referring to privatization and deregulation as cronyism, as well.

On October 14, 2016 at 7:04 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

internally held mental states that do not produce externally observable actions  cannot be morally judged.  Such states  have no moral or ethical  import therefore cannot be judged either moral or immoral.  To but it more briefly  only external actions can be moral or immoral.  

This coming from the man who calls morality "doxa".

On July 16, 2016 at 7:04 PM, George H. Smith said:

If you think that QM is all there is in the world, then you live a very barren life.

I never said that facts cannot refute a theory. I specifically referred to economics. Mises was not referring to physics and experiments that can be conducted under controlled conditions. He was referring to the study of complex social phenomena in which there cannot be controlled experiments. 

Your use of the term "science" is quite arbitrary. For centuries the label "science" (scientia) was applied to any sustained and systematic discipline that can yield knowledge. Lots of disciplines other than the "hard" sciences meet those criteria. You are using "science" in an honorific sense, as a value judgment to express your opinion that the knowledge of physics, etc., is somehow of a higher status that other types of knowledge. That's nonsense.

 

How long has this back-and-forth over science between you and Bob been going on for? It appears to me that you and him have been at it for at least six years, but I get the feeling it might be longer.

George H. Smith said:

[…]although I do not hold the philosophical theories of either Schopenhauer or Nietzsche in high regard, the same is not true of their psychological insights, which are frequently sagacious and highly suggestive.

What are some of these insights of theirs?

On August 6, 2016 at 0:08 PM, George H. Smith said:

The point Mises made was essentially this: An economic theory can only be refuted by a better economic theory, not by the empirical facts of history. This is so because we cannot conduct controlled experiments on social (including economic) phenomena; there are too many complex variables than cannot be isolated. And singular facts do not come attached with their own meanings and theoretical significance. The empirical facts have meaning only when interpreted within a theoretical framework, so different economists working from different theoretical frameworks will assign different levels of significance to the same fact. This does not mean that empirical facts are completely irrelevant to an economic theory. When economic phenomena run consistently counter to what an economic theory would cause us to expect, then this may cause us to doubt the soundness of our theory and thereby reevaluate it. But the falsification would occur at the theoretical level, not at the empirical level.

This has bothered me. If the fact that we cannot "conduct controlled experiments" is the problem, then shouldn't this also rule out astronomy as an empirical science. After all, all we have are observations, much like economic history. And why does the "singular facts do not come attached with their own meanings" not also apply to astronomy (or any of the other "hard" sciences)? Didn't Popper say something about fact (or maybe it was observations) being theory-laden?

21 hours ago, wolfdevoon said:

Huh? That was taken in 2009, I think. I look worse now. Assuming that you're talking about me

Sorry! I meant younger.

You look older in your picture.

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

For me it makes it interesting.

--Brant

thanks for the heads up

I actually haven't read it. I have read what Krauss says he does (or claims to do) and I've read/heard the ideas of his that he put into the book. He claims that physics can explain why there is "something" instead of "nothing". His explanation boils down to: the conditions in quantum fields (or something of the sort) are such that they give rise to particles and space. That's a fine explanation—if he were explaining why there are particles instead of just quantum stuff. The giant hole: quantum fields are something rather than nothing. His explanation doesn't address that big question at all.

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

This is not a problem in the physical sciences.  In the so-called social sciences, it is not clear what an assertion of fact looks like.

You are correct that it is not a problem with the "hard" sciences (I recognize no such distinction). It is a problem with falsificationism.

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

This is a little too short for me. So my question is, why?

--Brant

You cannot say that one scientific theory has a problem without having other scientific theories that are taken to be confirmed, and falsification does not provide a way to confirm theories.

On August 6, 2016 at 1:08 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

A clear indication that Economics is NOT a  science.  It is something, but I don't know exactly what.  I would refer to it as a discipline, since it does have an internal structure  and  logic is at work. 

One gaping hole in falsification is that it needs a theory on what constitutes confirmation.

On August 6, 2016 at 0:12 PM, George H. Smith said:

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. For one thing, I had nothing to do with the choice of Krauss to write a foreword; that was a decision made by Prometheus. 

Ghs

Krauss is of the same mentality as Bob. His book A Universe from Nothing was a train wreck and his response to criticisms of it was that science, unlike philosophy, is "useful". Given that Bob's tact, which you've ridiculed as nonsense (which I agree with), is almost identical to Krauss', him writing the foreword is perplexing.

Anyone familiar with it? Anyone find it convincing? I've become partial to Berkley's metaphysics in the past few years. I've gotten the impression that it is more in line with Aristotle than Locke's dualist empiricism.

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Which is correct: traveling or travelling?

--Brant

I'd go with "travellling", but it seems that a single L is also acceptable, as with a word like "labelling"/"labeling".

18 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

You're one up on me. This is my first exposure to "axiology." (Spell checker says it's a not-word.)

--Brant

Ain't that a kick. Happens to my spell checker, too.

On July 16, 2016 at 0:05 PM, George H. Smith said:

Popper never said this, of course. His falsifiability criterion was meant to distinguish between science and "metaphysics," or philosophy. Popper never claimed that  empirically unfalsifiable statements are "nonsense"; in fact, he wrote a good deal about philosophy himself.  You are reverting to the old logical positivist notion that has been demolished so many times that it is dead as a doornail in both philosophy and science. Popper was not a logical positivist, as he took pains to point out.

[Later edit] To be clear about this: The logical positivists said that propositions that cannot be empirically verified are meaningless. Popper said that only propositions that can be empirically falsified are scientific. But by nonscientific propositions Popper did not mean meaningless statements. Poppers line of demarcation between scientific and nonscientific propositions was not a criterion of meaning.

 

LP or LTV: which one is philosophically worse?