JennaW

Ok, since y'all are dropping the C-word, I'll just cut and paste some of the stuff I've found out when I went into studying the psychology of cultism. I'm not going to comment on the material, as I'm sure everyone can just read, and take what they will. I do not think, however, that Objectivism is a cult. A cult is a group of people, it's not a philosophy. Here goes [this might be a bit long]: From Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, Madeleine Tobias writes: Steve Hassan from freedomofmind.com writes: Paul Martin, M.D. wrote an article called Pitfalls To Recovery: Dr. Margaret T. Singer’s 6 Conditions for Thought Reform: Nancy Miquelon writes on Boundaries: Michael Lagone reviews the definition of Cult: And one more, a personal story that cites Lifton, [added notes from personal experience]: It's all categorized at my webpage.

There is "philosophical skepticism" and "scientific skepticism". I'm not a philosophical skeptic, but I am a scientific skeptic. I had to figure that out a while ago--- it seemed like the word "skeptic" had different meanings and I think in terms of science so I was always using it in the way Michael Shermer used it--- as against pseudo-science and supernatural beliefs by saying "show me the evidence". I think philosophical skeptics say things like "There's no such thing as evidence..." or "It's all in my head" or "How do you know it's evidence?" or similar questions that avoid the notion of evidence.

We covered Piaget in Psychology class. I also took a Sociology class (which I didn't like particularly much, although some of that field is interesting) and Piaget was mentioned there as well. As for this question: the problem of novelty--if what develops is merely a recombination of existing elements, is it truly new? Maybe this could be addressed via emergent properties?

Well, I don't agree with "the skeptics" in that just because you're fooled sometimes (i.e. optical illusions, attentional focus that misses some aspect of environment, etc.) it doesn't follow that you're fooled all of the time. Skeptics in this sense go too far on the fact that just because there is SOME uncertainty, then EVERYTHING ELSE is uncertain. Too much extrapolation. It seems that pragmatists are doing the same thing in with the appeal to majority thing in terms of opinion. What is theory and opinion is not necessarily fact. HOWEVER, in the realm of science, if there is overwhelming evidence (such as there is in evolution) then you go from opinion and theories about the evidence to the evidence itself. I think there is confusion between what is evidence and what is theory/opinion here; it's not only pragmatists (by your definition) that misses the difference between theories about evidence versus evidence itself. I don't know much about pragmatists--- in linguistics, there's a subfield called pragmatics but I don't think it's the same thing. I've always thought "pragmatic" meant "practical". I did read Plato ten years ago in philosophy class. I don't remember much of it. Here I think the word "essence" and what it means can get into trouble, and I'm finding that currently, we have a general notion of "essence" but when it's misapplied and diverts from reality, then you have something closer to what Plato said. And, I also think that one can make this (cognitive) mistake and not know it. I kinda see it as mistaking the real for the ideal (or vice versa?) Essentialism of concepts in cognitive science is first refuted by evidence in terms of how humans know the world and use concepts (I can give citations if asked) as in concept formation, the boundaries are fuzzy.

WSS-- You know, I was born in Canadia [laugh] I'm not sure if I can make the Olympics--- depending on when it is. So far, my summer is spent in upstate NY, my fall/winter spent in last year of school. After that, I hope to take my two degrees to some grad program that addresses my odd interests... wordpress.com has a nice platform for blogging, if you care to have a blog separate from SOLO.

Then I guess you know what I mean when I say vague... right off the bat, coming from the background I already do, it is vague in the way that it does not describe the depth of a field, nor cover any alternatives. The thing is, is that I don't fault Rand for that because I do put her in context. As she herself mentioned, knowledge is contextual--- even hers. I know I most likely think it's clear based on 1) my personal experiences and the depth of them, and 2) my lack of philosophical education in the realm of whatever Selfishness covers. As for the words "rational", I took it to mean "individual and reality-based". "Reality-based" can be a specific term, however reality itself is very complex and contains much phenomena that may be outside of current human understanding or observational powers. "Honest" to me meant "speaking what I know (facts, opinions), within the context of my knowledge and experience" so that if I have an opinion, I don't lie and speak another opinion that I don't have. "Productive" meant "positive contributions to humanity, to life, to the world in measurable workload"--- and that could mean learning, writing, researching, etc. And of course, I think all of that comes with understanding on a deep level what is real--- as in, other human beings are just as real and their behaviors are just as real, as mine. Perhaps it takes skill to be able to understand reality, and not only that, to understand one's own mind? Does rationality include introspection? In this way I've taken it for my own, for right now. Maybe when I have more time I can look deeper. To be continued...

I second that.

I'm reading The Russian Radical... and I'll try to post some thoughts, etc. on my website. I'm also interested in reading his essays on line and posting thoughts on them too... when I have more time. (I'm taking a history paper writing break right now )

WSS-- thanks for that Susan Haack quote! I have her stuff on my to-read list. I'm also going to copy and paste that quote into my blog so it can be shared...

I think in this respect she did work within the knowledge of her time. However, science certianly did not stop. I think cognitive science is going to be a huge pain in the butt to some people in the future.

I borrowed The Russian Radical out of the school library today and started on it. So far, it's marvelous! Based on 10 pages, I'd recommend those 10 pages to everyone. I think Rand did do some systems thinking but such types of thinking, as I'm finding out, is very hard to translate onto 2-D words (or it is 1-D?). I think when she wrote "clearly" she made a lot of mental leaps or thought deeply between sentences or paragraphs that were not explicit in her writing. And I think what happens is then that different individuals are affected differently by the writing, and take to heart some things and not others so therefore miss the whole systems thing; and some think of systems as "rigid" while others think of systems as "dynamic". That is why sometimes her writing to me is very dead-on, and in other circumstances, very vague. ITOE to me is vague in that sense where I can't tell where she gets her cognition/consciousness information from, however, Virtue of Selfishness is very clear to me. I do think she addresses change in ITOE, however, it was on one page; she does make room for new scientific knowledge. However, I do also keep that she was not a neuroscientist and she certainly wouldn't expect complexity science or fuzzy logic. That's fine to me. I think in order to learn and evolve, systems should be dynamic, changeable, and adaptive, in context. Thanks for those links! I will read.. after I finish my history final!

Actually, I have nothing against the ARI. I go on an individual by individual basis. If it happens that a large number of individuals that I disagree with (I'm fine with disagreement) and who "morally denounce" me for it are also all on one organization's staff or support (which has not happened to me personally), then I'll know to stay away. But 'til then... I've also heard that people who buy from or go to ARI conferences, as well as TOC, as well as humanist or libertarian or skeptic functions (sometimes all of them), are nice, respectful folks. The many things I most agree with in terms of Rand are her general ethics, her use of philosophy as a guideline, and her support of individualism.

The route I'm taking that I've found really awesome is that the only alignment I have is to myself, first and foremost. You can choose to align yourself anyway you chose; but the whole attitude of individuality is that others also have their own choice. Me? I choose either no organization or any number of multiple organizations. I stay away from any kind of written-in-stone-till-death-do-us-part loyalty oaths to organizations, either verbal or signed. As a human being, I retain the right to change my mind for a good reason over the course of the next 50 years I'm alive. I also stay away from anyone who think it's cool to grill me on my past. People change and grow. So I'm incredibly unsympathetic to complaints/drilling/etc. from others about who I choose to support, in my past, or now. It's like gay marriage [metaphor]-- if it's not for you, don't do it. Leave other people alone. And live your own life.

p. 71 in ITOE; her description of concepts' essentials are vague: what constitutes essential at what point? So the concept of "gene" has the essential definition of... what? I agree with her approach on p. 73 though on contextual application... even though she seems to acknowledge fuzzy boundaried concepts there but not on p. 71.

I posted points up on the concept formation thread somewhere. I forgot where it is, it's on this forum She is wrong about essentialism. I'm not sure what "strict precision of meaning" means, as concepts are more prototypical: from this pageNot into the Buddhism stuff (I glossed over it, but understand what she's saying) but I like that she ends with the support of wisdom--- although I would just say that meditation (which I don't do) is a process of gaining insight and awareness. I would recommend that she balances out both analytic and systems approaches; and her stuff on "self" is rather fuzzy to me. I've also been looking into Pinker, Lakoff, etc. (cognitive linguists), cognitive science itself (computational, math, empirical) and the dynamical nature of category boundaries. Here's a post on conceptual blending. The guy doens't like cognitive linguists (such as Lakoff and others); it's good for me to have this, as I look at everyone's work to see which pieces of theories are battled over, which are not, which are agreed upon. Here's a page full of posts on cognitive science stuff. I don't know what Rand says about metaphor, language, and how boundaries are used in categorization.

I would love to pick up that book by Lakoff & Johnson. The thing with Lakoff is that he has done research, as did Eleanor Rosch, on metaphors, categorization, meanings, etc. The people who trash the work (and I dare say that some did not even read half the body of Lakoff's work while they trash it) cannot understand the nature of their own mentality, research, change, learning, knowledge, and perspective. Total resistance to new ideas is mental death, and I don't learn anything from a person who has shut off their mind to that extent. I have not read the book, but I've come across it often by it being connected to cognitive science. I hope to read it soon, it is at my school library. I'll let you know when I have it... probably during the coming week, as I did look it up last week: "Cognitive science--the empirical study of the mind--calls upon us to create a new, empirically responsible philosophy, a philosophy consistent with empirical discoveries about the nature of mind," they write. "A serious appreciation of cognitive science requires us to rethink philosophy from the beginning, in a way that would put it more in touch with the reality of how we think." In other words, no Platonic forms, no Cartesian mind-body duality, no Kantian pure logic. Even Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics is revealed under scrutiny to have substantial problems." -- from Amazon I'd be glad to discuss the book, or any other topics that might come up. Currently, I'm thinking about boundaries, categorization, fuzzy logic. Fun!

I don't think it's worthless, but it's not sufficient specifically for me, because I'm in the field. I will be covering categorization and concept formation in this field in depth and experimental detail. I think "good beginning" is relative here depending on what is the goal. To understand concept formation and categorization in general, I'd suggest The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning ed. by Holyoak and Morrison. It's a good beginner's foray into most recent research-- and does not cover the topics in depth, even though it is 800 pages. That's the nature of the depth of cognitive science, that ITOE being just insufficient for someone who is going beyond an 800 page handbook. I would definitely say to anyone, though, to read ITOE, but to read current stuff as well in the same topics. I think of ITOE as a precursor; it's not worthless, nor wholly wrong or right (neither of which is relevant), but more along the lines of "one in many". As for boring--- I don't think it's boring... nor confusing. It's trying to tackle a much more difficult problem than it realizes, and that is where it's frustrating. It's only when this incompleteness is denied--- either by Rand, or by others--- is when you have problems. Taking ITOE at face value, I think, coming from a cog. sci. perspective, is a mistake. Straight up I would say ITOE is addition, subtraction, division, multiplication in the realm of cognitive science, and I'm looking at ITOE having done the algebra, geometry, and precalculus. (I'm using metaphor). When I'm a PhD, ITOE will be looked at from the level of fluid dynamics. If it's insufficient for me now, within the 5-10 years that I do research, it will be probably worse. Yes, but essentialism has been contradicted by research. Chain is part of a network, but only looking at concepts in chain formation is when you get stuck. I think concepts are dynamic and adaptive to some extent; I see them as analogous to fuzzy logic where boudaries of concepts are fuzzy, they can blend, network, change, and shift. Because of this dynamic ability (I think), our language changes over time as language is very indicative of concepts. She does not cover dynamics, the evolution of concepts/language, etc. This is where it's frustrating for me, where she does not cover complexity and dynamical aspects of our mental life. I'll look up articles sometime and link them here. George Lakoff and Eleanor Rosch did research into categorization and concepts; they're at UC Berkeley-- check out their stuff, it's fascinating.

Both. I'm speculative about her ideas about categorization-- according to research, categorization happens before concept formation. I'll look more into that. People want to argue this, but how does one argue with evidence? Inaccurate: she's vague about cognition--- what, exactly, is perception? Does perception happen at the sense organ, or in the brain, or both? Can perception and conceptualization happen concurrently? What entilas perception, and what is current evidence for that? At what point does conception come in, when categorization happens first? How is memory used, what does it have to do with conception, and what parts of the brain uses it, in what way? Also, concepts do not exist only in chains, there is a blending theory out, as well as conceptual networks that explain human cognition better. If she's inaccurate, and says that she is right, then she's wrong re: current research. Of course she wouldn't know that cognitive/psych. neuroscience was happening. Rand doesn't need to be right for me. She's right about some things, wrong about others, and I don't know why it would suck if she's wrong in ITOE versus some other book. Not even Einstein was right all the time in the face of newer research and experimentations.

I did at one time think that I looked to ITOE to provide answers, but instead, because I asked those questions you asked in your post, found that some of the things she came up with were wrong when compared to research. That's fine with me. If she's wrong, she's wrong, and I'm not saying she's "not good" for being wrong. It's just that if it doesn't match up to evidence, it doesn't, no matter what. At this point, I can read ITOE to know what she hypothesized. I know that. And I'm using some hard thinking too to bring what's covered in ITOE forward--- scientifically. Not every idea is going to work; the thing about Rand is that I consider her hypothesis (or theory, in laymen's-- not scientific-- terms) one of many. If she offered as valid a refutation of Russell's body of work as did Godel, that's fine. I *have* done this, and could not get past chapter 4 because the questions backed up to an insane degree. That is why I need to stop because with the trend that my questions are on, and the things I've discovered due to my questioning, I am probably better off right now delving, in depth, into my field first. I'll have to read ITOE at a later date simply because I am on the lookout for current information (within the past 10 years) and time is tight, especially if your field covers many disciplines. I have. The scope and depth of cog. neurosci. answers my questions. It's still a theory, and suffers from incompatibilities with the realities of human cognition, the intricacies of consciousness, and neurophysiology. And one theory that is organized logically but untested is not necessarily the truth--- other theories that are both logically organized AND apply to reality offer more sustantiative power to explain and perhaps predict. Her theory, as a whole, does not predict all that well the nature of humans, especially in a complex sense. She does well with simple explanations, though. I always try things first. I haven't decided all this on not reading it and I have asked all the questions you've raised. I've decided on the number of questions I've had, which was a lot, and which frustrated me because there were so many questions. I cover some of the topics in my blog, but they are not specific to Rand. They are specific to their own topic.

If anything in ITOE is at odds with evidence, I'm following the evidence. If I ignore evidence, I'm ignoring the only way I can know about the world--- direct observation and experience via the nature of the human senses. My hold is on reality, not ITOE. Does that answer your question?

(Note from MSK: Excuse me for barging into your post, Jenna. By suggestion of Robert Campbell, this thread was split off from another thread in "Ethics," "Great quote from Bertrand Russell," since it started discussing ITOE from an epistemological point of view.) Some of the posts below contain quotes from posts in the former thread. It's not the attitudes of others that I am looking at. Those attitudes (of the people who read *only* ITOE and think they know all about cognition, consciousness, etc.) are irrelevant to me. It's just that cognitive neuroscience (which includes pyschology, linguistics, cognition, neuroscience, etc.) covers current research into what ITOE covers in more depth and detail, and some of that research shows some information in ITOE to be incorrect. I'm also hoping to bring in complexity/systems science into my study of cog. neurosci., and none of Rand's works as far as I know tackles complexity science, chaos theory, game theory, nor systems thinking. Those were around during her lifetime and were in existence by the time of her death. Funny enough, the more I accidentally come across the words of Nobel Laureates in my studies of complexity thinking, the more I know I'm on the right track--- so far, they've all mentioned 1) The joy of discovery, fearlessness of uncertainty, and hunger for new information, 2) The complexities of the human, as well as the world, and 3) They all had an understanding of systems, dynamics, adaptation, perspective, and change. I contrast the activities, impact, and words of these Nobel Laureates and those of the people who follow Rand blindly without putting her in cultural, historical, nor individual context. Huge discrepancy. I find JARS a far more a potentially impactful direction than anything I've come across in regards to Rand and it will be because of its nonpartisanship. I definitely know where I'm going. Forward.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about not calling anyone a fundamentalist. I wasn't calling anyone a fundamentalist. I have a tendency to look at things from a stepped-back perspective, and I noticed that I had a quote--- from somewhere, no attribution--- that fit the general nature of this thread. Basically, I put that quote down because one of the dangers there is is not being able to say you're wrong, or your're sorry. That is what I meant--- that this tendency to not consider that one might be wrong, is a dangerous notion to hold on to. I live my life now knowing that life is a growing process, that what I say may be be discovered to be wrong. One of my friends is reading a biography on Hitler. My friend visited me for a little while last night to lend me a book about ancient Rome, and he told me that Hitler read a bunch of stuff for the purposes of a distinct goal of leading Germany. However, in this biography, Hitler stopped reading all this stuff (philosophy, psychology, politics, etc.) at one point, decided that he knew all he had to know, and proceeded to write Mein Kampf and do all the terrible things he did. I told my friend in reply: "That's when you're screwed, is when you stop reading, you think you know everything there is to know, you stop growing and learning more. If you're not careful, and you box your own growth into a closed, homogenous system that Hitler wrote about and supported, you have stopped evolving as a human and you'll have a propensity to be destructive." “As soon as one point alone is removed from the sphere of dogmatic certainty, the discussion will not simply result in a new and better formulation which will have greater consistency but may easily lead to endless debates and general confusion. In such cases the question must always be carefully considered as to whether a new and more adequate formulation is to be preferred, though it may cause a controversy within the movement, or whether it may not be better to retain the old formula which, though probably not the best, represents an organism enclosed in itself, solid and internally homogeneous. All experience shows that the second of these alternatives is preferable.” — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf I don't think you are a fundamentalist, Charles. I think that I can learn from you; but I also think I can learn from everyone and everything-- even Mein Kampf. Actually, I don't know where that fundie quote came from, but it's not from me. If anyone else knows, I'd like to be able to attach a name to it. I think my father would write the same things about me. And I think both fathers and daughters can learn from each other. --J

Ellen, take care and be happy. I wish you the best. I've never really had a "hardcore orthodox Oist" phase. What happened with me here is that one free-spirited individualist met a cacophony. It took me 3 months to balance all of it out and to pick out what I wanted, and what I didn't. But, uh, I did have another orthodox type phase so I'm basing my current experience on a very hard lesson learned.

Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong."

I love Bertrand Russell. He's got a lot to be admired for. "There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death." --Bertrand Russell Also, if I could do something like this in my lifetime, I'd be very proud of myself. So, no, I'm not going to knock Bertrand Russell for anything if I have yet to equal him in my own theories, promoting progress, promoting happiness, promoting knowledge, and promoting wisdom. I may not agree with every ounce of his prolific work, but he went out and produced and stood up for thought, knowledge, and wisdom and tried to live his life the best he could. Miss Rand had her opinions; I have mine. If I had to have her opinions, I'd be her clone. And I am finding out that while she was wise in some ways, she did not expressly promote wisdom itself (with what I've read so far). I've also decided not to read ITOE. It frustrates me intellectually because I find much of it lacking specific scientific support and citation, therefore making it vague. And frankly, I find it even more frustrating that people just swallow what she wrote without fact checking; not to mention quote it to me like I'll just take it face value too. My own field of cognitive/psych. neuroscience, as well as my studies into linguistics, cover all of what ITOE covers and then some. I'm a hard sell.