Serious Students vs. Degenerate Objectivists

[john42t]

You will need to define what you mean by a "hard science." Philosophy is not a "hard science" as that term is commonly understood today.

True, it's only hard science as understood by Rand. Philosophy as understood by philosophy professors is (neo-)mysticism.

This in itself is one of the core tenets of Objectivism: That a philosophy can be correct or not. That it's a science rather than a flavor.

If that's true, and if Objectivism is true to a large extent, then it will survive like boolean logic and for the same reason.

If not, it was a religion and cult like any other.

[George H. Smith]

You will need to define what you mean by a "hard science." Philosophy is not a "hard science" as that term is commonly understood today.

True, it's only hard science as understood by Rand. Philosophy as understood by philosophy professors is (neo-)mysticism. This in itself is one of the core tenets of Objectivism: That a philosophy can be correct or not. That it's a science rather than a flavor. If that's true, and if Objectivism is true to a large extent, then it will survive like boolean logic and for the same reason. If not, it was a religion and cult like any other.

I don't recall that Rand ever claimed that philosophy is, or should be, a hard science. Such a claim runs against the grain of her thinking, according to which philosophy forms the foundation of the hard sciences.

Philosophy is a "science" in the old fashioned sense of an organized, systematic body of knowledge. Rand would agree with this, and so do I. But in modern parlance, a "hard science" is a specifically empirical mode of inquiry with well-established and widely accepted methods of verification. This doesn't describe philosophy at all.

Whether a given philosophy or ideology survives may have relatively little to do with its truth value. If we are talking about a world of predominantly rational people then, yes, rational ideologies will stand a good chance. But this is not a predominantly rational world, unfortunately. It never has been, and it probably never will be.

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

Sir! I just called you a knight in shining armour, and you refer to me as a female do? You, you..you ewe, you!

Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, for an old black ram is tupping your white ewe...

Anyway, I hope you enjoy living in the 13th century. And I hope you don't like to play with matches.

It was still the Medieval warm period, and besides matches weren’t invented yet.

[john42t]

Philosophy is a "science" in the old fashioned sense of an organized, systematic body of knowledge. Rand would agree with this, and so do I. But in modern parlance, a "hard science" is a specifically empirical mode of inquiry with well-established and widely accepted methods of verification. This doesn't describe philosophy at all.

In modern parlance, "hard science" means: It gets results. As opposed to what philosophers and the humanities do - which is, of course, also science, and very important, and lots of tax money should go there, yes, yes. It's just, umm.. "different" and you can't expect to get any reliable answers. That's "not hard science". Everything else is the neo-mystical coverup of this ugly truth.

Rand said: Philosophy can be true or false, it doesn't have to be the wish-wash that it's painted to be.

Whether a given philosophy or ideology survives may have relatively little to do with its truth value. If we are talking about a world of predominantly rational people then, yes, rational ideologies will stand a good chance. But this is not a predominantly rational world, unfortunately. It never has been, and it probably never will be.

Depends on what you call predominantly. Most people don't get boolean algebra either. And there's plenty of sheep on the meadows who are not even capable of rational thought. But then those don't get to vote a government.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yeah, I got it. We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong.

George,

You and I see the same weakness in Phil's approach.

... the danger here is the implied separation of human thought into Objectivism (the good) and Everything Else (the bad).

When a person accepts this premise, I can't think of a more precise name for it than faith in dogma.

Michael

[George H. Smith]

Philosophy is a "science" in the old fashioned sense of an organized, systematic body of knowledge. Rand would agree with this, and so do I. But in modern parlance, a "hard science" is a specifically empirical mode of inquiry with well-established and widely accepted methods of verification. This doesn't describe philosophy at all.

In modern parlance, "hard science" means: It gets results....

This is not a serious answer. You can get "results" from playing in a football game or by baking a cake or by preaching from a pulpit, but these activities are not "hard sciences." If you expect me to engage in a serious discussion with you, then read a little on the methodology of the hard sciences. Their methodology is not that of philosophy, nor should it be.

In modern (as opposed to classical) terms, philosophy is just that -- philosophy, not a "science." This is not to deny that philosophy is a cognitive (i.e., knowledge-yielding) discipline. Philosophy does give us knowledge, and very important knowledge. History also gives us knowledge, but it is not a science either. Nor is mathematics, for that matter, because it is not an empirical discipline.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Yeah, I got it. We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong.

George, You and I see the same weakness in Phil's approach.

... the danger here is the implied separation of human thought into Objectivism (the good) and Everything Else (the bad).

When a person accepts this premise, I can't think of a more precise name for it than faith in dogma. Michael

Ironically, Phil shares the problem of many Orthodox Objectivists: lack of objectivity. He is so mired in his own beliefs that he cannot understand how reasonable people could honestly disagree with them. He therefore attributes dissent to ignorance (as with infidels) or to a willful and stubborn refusal to accept the truth (as with heretics).

I am not advocating some kind of namby-pamby relativism here. I am as certain of my own beliefs, or at least some of them, as anyone on OL. But my own certainty does not lead me to adopt Phil's brand of subjectivism, according to which his own thinking processes should serve as an absolute standard of rationality. There are plenty of rational people around who do not accept O'ism.

One important aspect of O'ism is its stress on human fallibility, which is really the foundation of Rand's contextualism. It is remarkable that (from Phil's perspective) Ayn Rand, despite her fallibility, was the first person in the history of the world who never made a philosophical error. It is also fortunate that Phil, despite his own fallibility, has so thoroughly examined every feature of Rand's philosophy that he knows it to be 100 percent correct.

In a world of fallible human beings, we are fortunate indeed to have lived in an age with two phenomenal thinkers -- Ayn Rand and Phil Coates -- who, despite the odds, managed to arrive at a level of philosophical perfection that can only be described as practical infallibility.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The following passage from my book Why Atheism? (Prometheus, 2001) is relevant to this discussion, especially the part about why reasonable people can disagree. I am here discussing the empiricism and fallibilism of Francis Bacon, who was a major hero to Enlighenment thinkers. I am contrasting Bacon with Descartes, so this passage is a bit out of context. Nevertheless, the essentials should be clear enough. This excerpt is from the chapter "The Career of Reason." I have deleted the endnotes.

According to Bacon, therefore, certainty is achieved piecemeal through the investigation of particular knowledge claims, not wholesale though a process of deductive reasoning based on clear and distinct ideas. Our ideas, if they are to generate useful knowledge, must be framed according to our experience of nature; and this experience, if it is to be reliable, must be subjected to objective methods of verification.

The foregoing must be kept in mind if we are to appreciate Bacon’s celebrated discussion of the various Idols, or “fallacies of the mind of man,” that hinder our quest for knowledge. Bacon was the first great pathologist of human reason, and his mode of analysis -- a mixture of psychology, sociology, and epistemology – was used by later philosophers to explain why reasonable people with good intentions can, and often do, hold incompatible beliefs. It was thus largely owing to Bacon that religious dissent, which had previously been condemned as the deliberate (and therefore sinful) rejection of divine truth, came to be regarded instead as the innocent byproduct of human fallibility. And this doctrine of the natural diversity of opinion (especially as developed by John Locke) was destined to play a key role in the struggle for religious toleration.

Bacon’s basic point is quite simple and, from the perspective of a Cartesian Rationalist, quite disturbing. There is no natural harmony or correspondence between the world of ideas and the world of nature. If, as the Cartesian maintains, our sense organs are inherently untrustworthy and liable to lead us astray, the same is true of reason itself.

The human intellect has its own distinctive characteristics, a nature apart from that which it seeks to know. Understanding is not a passive process, in which the intellect merely reflects the external world of nature. Rather, the intellect actively contributes to the cognitive process, leaving indelible marks on its final product. Thus, “the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.”These natural distortions are what Bacon calls Idols, or false notions, of the human understanding.

Bacon’s divides his Idols into four principal categories: (1) Idols of the Tribe “are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man.” (2) Idols of the Cave pertain to the individual, for “everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts and corrupts the light of nature….” (3) Idols of the Market are “formed from the commerce and association of men with each other….” (4) Idols of the Theater “have crept into men’s minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy…as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds.”(Since there is a good deal of overlap among these catergories, I shall simply discuss some of Bacon’s more interesting points without attempting to classify them.)

The human understanding, according to Bacon, does not operate in isolation, apart from the will and affections. Our desires and feelings influence how we think. We are more likely to believe something that we wish were true, the comfortable and the familiar, rather than something difficult, disturbing, or unconventional. We also tend to develop a vested interest in our beliefs, defending a pet theory because we created it, worked hard on it, or simply because of its familiarity.

Bacon notes that people who think differently will often exhibit different biases. People with strong powers of observation, for example, may attribute too much importance to minor differences among things, whereas other people may over-emphasize their similarities. In any case, to examine our own beliefs objectively is extremely difficult, given the many subjective factors that affect our understanding. But Bacon does offer a valuable piece of advice, namely, that we should be particularly suspicious of those theories which give us the most satisfaction, subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny and criticism.

Among the Idols of the Tribe (i.e., erroneous tendencies which, because they flow from the nature of the intellect, are common to every person), two are especially interesting. The first is the natural tendency of the human understanding to suppose “a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.” We are uncomfortable with something that appears unique, something that we cannot fit neatly into a pattern, so we will invent an imaginary order through the use of parallels, analogies, and the like,

After adopting a pleasing or popular theory, we tend to notice only that evidence which seems to support it, while ignoring all counter-evidence, however cogent and abundant, that might conflict with our theory. And even when we do become aware of counter-evidence, we will be extremely reluctant to admit that our theory has been falsified; instead, we will modify and reinterpret our theory, rationalize and explain away the troublesome evidence, or find some other way to save our theory from the perils of criticism....Etc.

Ghs

[anthony]

Ghs,

This is fascinating, and central to what - and why and how - we all debate here.

So many "Idols" (false notions), so little time.

Much more prosaically than you or Bacon put it, I eventually and gradually came to the realization not to "fall in love with my own ideas" - or at least to be extra cautious when I did. That was learning the hard way.

You know, we often speak of the good old BS-Meter, but I've wondered about the existence of its opposite - a Truth Meter.

What happens, given the above context, those few occasions when you just KNOW something is right?

When it hurts? as the saying goes.

[edit] Or, as often, exalts?

Tony

[john42t]

This is not a serious answer.

I wasn't phrased seriously, and I shouldn't have done it that way, sorry about that.

I also wanted to thank you for your proper answer about the draft question in the other thread, that was a neat overview.

In modern (as opposed to classical) terms, philosophy is just that -- philosophy, not a "science." This is not to deny that philosophy is a cognitive (i.e., knowledge-yielding) discipline. Philosophy does give us knowledge, and very important knowledge. History also gives us knowledge, but it is not a science either. Nor is mathematics, for that matter, because it is not an empirical discipline.

Let's see if I can get another chunk of information out of you.

Here's where I'm coming from: I'm German, the German language maps to different concepts in regards to the above. The best translation for "science" is "Wissenschaft", but "Wissenschaft" includes the humanities (and history) as well as philosophy and mathematics. In fact the humanities are called "Geisteswissemschaften" ("sciences" of spirit) as opposed to "Naturwissenschaften" (natural sciences).

So I basically take "Wissenschaft" to mean: Figuring things out. And they are split into subdisciplines, maths being very special and the most clearly defined subdiscipline, philosophy being the foundation of all knowledge - as knowledge is hierarchical.

I suppose your definitions/categories are different. My questions would be this:

Where do you take yours from? Do you believe there's a common agreement on them? If so, what makes you confident that those agreed-on definitions are not themselves an example of neo-mystical corruption? (Supposed you actually believe that the corruption exists or runs that deep.)

[George H. Smith]

This is not a serious answer.

I wasn't phrased seriously, and I shouldn't have done it that way, sorry about that.

I also wanted to thank you for your proper answer about the draft question in the other thread, that was a neat overview.

In modern (as opposed to classical) terms, philosophy is just that -- philosophy, not a "science." This is not to deny that philosophy is a cognitive (i.e., knowledge-yielding) discipline. Philosophy does give us knowledge, and very important knowledge. History also gives us knowledge, but it is not a science either. Nor is mathematics, for that matter, because it is not an empirical discipline.

Let's see if I can get another chunk of information out of you.

Here's where I'm coming from: I'm German, the German language maps to different concepts in regards to the above. The best translation for "science" is "Wissenschaft", but "Wissenschaft" includes the humanities (and history) as well as philosophy and mathematics. In fact the humanities are called "Geisteswissemschaften" ("sciences" of spirit) as opposed to "Naturwissenschaften" (natural sciences).

So I basically take "Wissenschaft" to mean: Figuring things out. And they are split into subdisciplines, maths being very special and the most clearly defined subdiscipline, philosophy being the foundation of all knowledge - as knowledge is hierarchical.

I suppose your definitions/categories are different. My questions would be this:

Where do you take yours from? Do you believe there's a common agreement on them? If so, what makes you confident that those agreed-on definitions are not themselves an example of neo-mystical corruption? (Supposed you actually believe that the corruption exists or runs that deep.)

Wiki explains the distinction between "hard" and "soft" sciences as follows:

Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms often used when comparing scientific fields of academic research or scholarship, with hard meaning perceived as being more scientific, rigorous, or accurate. Fields of the natural, physical, and computing sciences are often described as hard, while the social sciences and similar fields are often described as soft.The hard sciences are characterized as relying on quantifiable empirical data, relying on the scientific method, and focusing on accuracy and objectivity. Publications in the hard sciences such as natural sciences make heavier use of graphs than soft sciences such as sociology, according to the graphism thesis. Within the areas of natural science and social science, some disciplines are viewed as "harder" than others. For example, physics is viewed as harder than, say, paleontology since the former but not the latter can generate large quantities of experimental data. Similarly, economics is viewed as harder than many other social sciences because, while most of its data are empirically observed and not experimentally generated, there nevertheless is a large amount of available data to be analyzed statistically.

A related aspect of the hard versus soft distinction has to do with the ease of drawing strong conclusions. In soft sciences, there are often numerous variables that might have an influence on some variable of interest, and many of those variables either may be non-quantifiable or may be quantifiable but difficult to obtain data on; but further, even with plentiful data, it may be difficult to disentangle the effects of such a large number of variables. In contrast, typically in the hard sciences there are only a few, readily identified, causative variables, making it easier to infer specific causative effects.

I want to comment on other things you said, but I will do this in a separate post.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

In modern (as opposed to classical) terms, philosophy is just that -- philosophy, not a "science." This is not to deny that philosophy is a cognitive (i.e., knowledge-yielding) discipline. Philosophy does give us knowledge, and very important knowledge. History also gives us knowledge, but it is not a science either. Nor is mathematics, for that matter, because it is not an empirical discipline.

Let's see if I can get another chunk of information out of you.

Here's where I'm coming from: I'm German, the German language maps to different concepts in regards to the above. The best translation for "science" is "Wissenschaft", but "Wissenschaft" includes the humanities (and history) as well as philosophy and mathematics. In fact the humanities are called "Geisteswissemschaften" ("sciences" of spirit) as opposed to "Naturwissenschaften" (natural sciences).

So I basically take "Wissenschaft" to mean: Figuring things out. And they are split into subdisciplines, maths being very special and the most clearly defined subdiscipline, philosophy being the foundation of all knowledge - as knowledge is hierarchical.

This is an interesting subject, one that I wrote about nearly a decade ago in a book manuscript (The Disciplines of Liberty) that will never be completed. This passage will not answer your question about philosophy, but it will lay the groundwork, and I will discuss the matter further in a subsequent post. In the first section of Chapter 6, "The Human Sciences," I wrote:

Chapter Six

The Human Sciences

What we now call the human sciences (economics, sociology, etc.) were traditionally known as the “moral sciences.” “Moral,” in this context, referred to man’s moral agency -- i.e., to his ability to reason, to formulate general principles, and to act upon those principles in pursuit of chosen goals. The fact that human action is purposeful and volitional was seen as crucial to the distinction between the moral sciences and the natural sciences (such as physics), which investigate the deterministic behavior of physical phenomena. In this classificatory scheme, physiology, anatomy and similar disciplines, though they include human beings as part of their subject matter, are natural sciences rather than moral sciences, because they focus on man as a physical organism, rather than as a rational agent.

The term “moral science” has not been used much since the nineteenth century, mainly because the word “moral” now suggests a normative discipline, such as ethics, in which actions are evaluated as right or wrong. It is to avoid potential confusion between prescriptive and descriptive disciplines that the label “moral science” has been largely abandoned by modern theorists, and I shall follow their lead. Throughout this book I shall generally refer to any discipline that studies purposeful human action as a “human science.”

The term “human sciences” was popularized, if not actually coined, by the German philosopher and social theorist Wilhelm Dilthey. In his Introduction to the Human Sciences (1887), Dilthey wrote:

“What is contained in the concept of science is generally divided into two subdivisions. One is designated by the name ‘natural science,’ while for the other there is, curiously enough, no generally accepted designation. I shall follow those thinkers who refer to this second half of the globus intellectualis by the term Geisteswissenschaften.”

According to Dilthey, the word Geisteswissenschaften, which is usually translated into English as “human science,” became popular in Germany after the extensive circulation of John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic, which contains a classic discussion of the methodology of psychology and the social sciences. It is interesting to note that Mill uses the traditional term “moral science” as a general label for these fields of study, but this English expression was translated into German as Geisteswissenschaften, which in turn was retranslated into English as “human science.”

Dilthey was not altogether happy with this expression, because the Geist in Geisteswissenschaften means “spirit” or “mind,” so a literal translation would read “the science of mind.” And this conveys an unduly narrow conception of what is studied by the human sciences, which are concerned with the totality of human nature and it various manifestations in society. Nevertheless, Dilthey decided to accept this expression as the “least inappropriate” among others available to us, including “social science,” “sociology,” “moral science,” and “cultural science.” Again quoting Dilthey:

“All of these designations suffer from the same fault of being too narrow relative to their subject matter. And the name chosen here has at least the advantage of appropriately characterizing the central sphere of facts in terms of which the unity of these disciplines was actually perceived, their scope outlined, and their demarcation from the natural sciences established, no matter how imperfectly.”

In other words, the human sciences evolved as they did historically, and were contrasted with the natural sciences, because it was believed that man’s consciousness endows him with unique characteristics and powers that set him apart from other physical and biological entities. And it was further believed that man’s ability to reason and to choose among existing alternatives generates the need for a unique method, one distinct from the natural sciences, in formulating a science of man and society. Therefore, the literal translation of Geisteswiffenschaften as “science of mind” properly refers, not merely to the study of human consciousness (which is the domain of psychology), but rather to its many implications for the study of humans beings in general, especially in the realm of social interaction. And this broader meaning of Geisteswiffenschaften is captured in its customary translation as “human science.”

Aside from the antiquated “moral science,” the closest competitor to “human science” as a satisfactory label is “cultural science” – a term that was used by the famous sociologist Max Weber, among others. “Culture,” in this context, signifies anything that results from human ingenuity and effort, that realm of the natural world that has been modified and transformed by human action. I shall therefore treat “cultural science” and “human science” as synonymous terms, and I will occasionally speak of the “cultural sciences” when this comports with the usage of a particular writer.

Obviously the division of science into two broad categories, the human and the natural, depends upon, and presupposes, certain philosophical views about human beings and their similarities and differences with the rest of nature. Why should we differentiate the human sciences from the natural sciences in the first place? If man is a part of nature – as Dilthey and other champions of the human sciences freely admitted – then why drive a methodological wedge between the study of man and the study of nature? Why not simply speak of the natural sciences and subsume the study of human beings under this general heading?

These and similar questions have been debated for many years, and we shall deal with them throughout this book. For now we should note that such questions are methodological in character. They fall within the domain of the philosophy of science, a discipline that subjects the concepts and procedures of the special sciences to philosophical analysis and investigates what those sciences have in common, and where they differ....

Ghs

[bmacwilliam]

After adopting a pleasing or popular theory, we tend to notice only that evidence which seems to support it, while ignoring all counter-evidence, however cogent and abundant, that might conflict with our theory.

Great post in general George, and this in particular rings very true. Point out some "counter-evidence" to Shayne and you get a biological equivalent of a blue screen; complete with the nonsensical stack dump and all.

To add to this, I think we too often forget that to have any sort of productive argument or discussion we need to proceed from a point of mutual agreement first, then pinpoint where the diversion occurs. I think many people, for a variety of reasons, refuse to agree on anything whatsoever lest their much invested position be threatened in any way whatsoever.

Bob

[caroljane]

Brant as Annie Oakley. Tony, in the All Blacks jersey he has to wear all year anyway, the result of an injudicious bet. WSS in his usual

Well, yes - pass the salt, please; I have a nice open wound in my throat to sprinkle it.

Though I said all year the Kiwis had the top team, in all justice they deserved the Cup.

It was the 'Boks going down to the Wallabies by one point that really hurt! No ways! that ref needs specs.

Tony

At least you got to see the final. When I was getting only the Free Preview satellite, I got interested in the World Cup because of the war dances - I could watch those all day! My son had played rugby in high school but I never understood the game. But now, since the only other sports choices were gaelic football and synchronized swimming, I found the rugby gripping. I still didn't know what was going on of course, but the team stories backgrounders and the national anthems made me feel part of it all. I followed the results in the newspapers and was surprised that France even played rugby, let alone well-- anyway I was very pumped after the seis , when of course the free preview ended, replaced by The Mom channel.

[Philip Coates]

> We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong. [GHS]

Here's a challenge for you:

1. Quote where I claimed either of those two things.

2. Or admit you are lying, distorting my position, and creating a straw man to make it easier for you to knock down.

(You get a free pass for misspelling the word presupposing.)

[john42t]

This is an interesting subject, one that I wrote about nearly a decade ago in a book manuscript (The Disciplines of Liberty) that will never be completed. This passage will not answer your question about philosophy, but it will lay the groundwork, and I will discuss the matter further in a subsequent post. In the first section of Chapter 6, "The Human Sciences," I wrote:

Nice piece, and here you do call everything science, presumably including maths. I prefer that terminology.

About the wiki thing, that's about what I would have expected. A definition by non-essentials. They basically say the soft-sciences are those that don't work that well. (Empiricism can't be part of the definition as maths isn't empirical and presumable very hard, and I presume in this context, maths counts as science. Computer science is also rather hard and rather non-empirical.) Of course they mean the soft sciences *can't* work that well, whereas I put it down to neo-mystical corruption and believe they can be just a precise as the rest (except for maths which is always more precise).

Looking forward to the next piece.

[Selene]

After adopting a pleasing or popular theory, we tend to notice only that evidence which seems to support it, while ignoring all counter-evidence, however cogent and abundant, that might conflict with our theory.

Great post in general George, and this in particular rings very true. Point out some "counter-evidence" to Shayne and you get a biological equivalent of a blue screen; complete with the nonsensical stack dump and all.

To add to this, I think we too often forget that to have any sort of productive argument or discussion we need to proceed from a point of mutual agreement first, then pinpoint where the diversion occurs. I think many people, for a variety of reasons, refuse to agree on anything whatsoever lest their much invested position be threatened in any way whatsoever.

Bob

Bob:

Precisely.

One of the first rules of debate and argumentation is the definition of terms. If you skip that step, you get a lot of useless verbal combat signifying little understanding that becomes employable in the real world.

I used to attempt to try to have Shayne agree to mutual definitions of terms and then to pose a formal debate resolution, but he never trusted me enough to try it.

Adam

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Waiting for Evidence...or a Retraction

Usually George H. Smith is very quick - not just the same evening, but within hours - to attack any post I make when we are having a disagreement. I wonder why he has not been willing to retract the following misstatement of what I said:

" > We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong. [GHS]

Here's a challenge for you: 1. Quote where I claimed either of those two things. 2. Or admit you are lying, distorting my position, and creating a straw man to make it easier for you to knock down. [Post #290] "

George has been willing to insult me and call me a coward when I don't immediately respond to his questions or challenges. And he's had time to post on other things since. I know you're reading this thread, George. Why not retract the double misstatement...or quote me where I made either claim?

[George H. Smith]

Subject: Waiting for Evidence...or a Retraction

Usually George H. Smith is very quick - not just the same evening, but within hours - to attack any post I make when we are having a disagreement. I wonder why he has not been willing to retract the following misstatement of what I said:

" > We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong. [GHS]

Here's a challenge for you: 1. Quote where I claimed either of those two things. 2. Or admit you are lying, distorting my position, and creating a straw man to make it easier for you to knock down. [Post #290] "

George has been willing to insult me and call me a coward when I don't immediately respond to his questions or challenges. And he's had time to post on other things since. I know you're reading this thread, George. Why not retract the double misstatement...or quote me where I made either claim?

Here is the context of my comment, which you conveniently snipped:

You can't criticize someone as a backslider, a heretic, or the equivalent when what he backs away from and abandons is i) not true at all, ii) or he doesn't really understand that it is, iii) or it's not important or optional. --- Got it straight now, George?

Yeah, I got it. We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong. That makes everything else very easy, now doesn't it?

I was referring to an unstated presupposition of your approach. No one else who commented on my post had any trouble understanding what I meant.

Identifying the implicit presuppositions of an argument is SOP for anyone who has mastered O'ism. Didn't you know that?

Ghs

[Selene]

En attebdant Godot: a tragicomedy in two acts

[George H. Smith]

En attebdant Godot: a tragicomedy in two acts

Here is the short version:

Ghs

[Selene]

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Mind-Reading and Putting Words in Your Opponent's Mouth

" We begin a discussion of such matters by presupossing that Rand is 100 percent right and that everyone else is wrong." [GHS]

When challenged to quote where I said either part of this, he responds: "I was referring to an ***unstated presupposition*** of your approach."

That way you can stretch anybody's point, make anybody sound absurd by putting whatever words you want in their mouth. And then you have a straw man you can beat and pummel.

I never claimed that Rand is 100 percent right. I never claimed that everyone else is wrong (Aristotle?) Nor do I believe either statement. It is absurd and almost criminally stupid to "read into" my posts on this thread either of those two absolutely absurd ideas. And I think you -damn well- know it.

[Philip Coates]

"Unstated presupposition", my ass!!!

What sense would it make for anyone to think that everything a philosopher said was 100% right (and on top of that nobody else had anything right) in order to argue that one should not slide away from the key principles.

For Christ sake, George even said in a prior post he didn't know what I meant when I spoke of "key principles" I was including and -- to add greater clarity -- I gave a full paragraph of them.

Un-Fucking-Believable!!!!!!

[Philip Coates]

What's also unbelievable is that not a single one of Geoge's cheering squad has dared to say anything even as mildly critical as "well, George, I think you may have overstated it. Phil didn't actually say...."

Meanwhile, they have no problem calling me every name in the book....

(Double UnFuckingBelievable.)