Kant and Hume

[John Day]

Ayn Rand described the philosophy of Immanuel Kant as "the exact opposite of Objectivism" and bigger evil than Hitler and Stalin because his philosophy set the stage for them. But under that standard, couldn't David Hume be considered a greater evil than all of them because he set the stage for Kant's philosophy? Based on what little I've read, Hume's skepticism and his rejection of the law of causality is more severe than Kant's. Could anyone try to clarify this for me?

Also, are Kant's original works worth reading to enhance one's understanding of his philosophy? How technical are his works? I greatly enjoy philosophic works, but for instance, I found Introduction to Objectivism Epistemology difficult to understand. Thanks in advance!

[BaalChatzaf]

Ayn Rand described the philosophy of Immanuel Kant as "the exact opposite of Objectivism" and bigger evil than Hitler and Stalin because his philosophy set the stage for them. But under that standard, couldn't David Hume be considered a greater evil than all of them because he set the stage for Kant's philosophy? Based on what little I've read, Hume's skepticism and his rejection of the law of causality is more severe than Kant's. Could anyone try to clarify this for me?

Also, are Kant's original works worth reading to enhance one's understanding of his philosophy? How technical are his works? I greatly enjoy philosophic works, but for instance, I found Introduction to Objectivism Epistemology difficult to understand. Thanks in advance!

Hume never denied cause and effect. He simply pointed out the the connection of contiguity between cause and effect does not prove there is a necessary connection.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Reading Lists and Expanding One's Education

"Are Kant's original works worth reading to enhance one's understanding of his philosophy?" [John Day]

What would be your purpose in reading Kant or Hume (or Hegel or Foucault or Berkeley or Kierkegaard)? If you are a graduate student in philosophy or are writing a technical journal article refuting mistaken philosophies or defending reason from attack, you might have a reason. Another reason might be if you don't yet understand in essentials the history of philosophy and its impact on the world.

But here is the point: Rand and Peikoff point out that Kant and Hume have *fundamentally and thoroughly false philosophies*. They are not saying things, in the central thrust of their writings which are true. (1) Kant says reason cannot know reality and is stuck in the world of appearances (the phenomenal world) and can't know reality as it actually is (the noumenal world). And then he writes whole (hard to follow and with technical jargon, apparently) books to defend this and apply it to art, science, other areas. (2) Hume attacks causality, e.g., saying he observes a person letting go of something and it falling to the ground but doesn't 'see' a causal connection like a little red flag popping out, saying 'gravity always works'.

It's possible that somewhere buried in the books of the really bad thinkers there are buried one or two nuggets of truth or beauty. But you'd have to -find- that needle in that haystack. Context: There is limited time a life to read all the wonderful, beautiful, helpful, mind-expanding books out there. I'm unclear: Why do I so often find you and some other Oists so wistfully eager to read very bad philosophers, detailed defenses of insane ideas *before* you have read Shakespeare, Dickens, the Romantic Poets, great history books, books on how to think and write clearly. Not to mention Aristotle and the great plays of the Greeks and others? Or learn Latin or a new science or about the culture of China? (Or any other of a vast range of choices which are fun or useful or inspiring or mind-expanding.)

[jriggenbach]

What would be your purpose in reading Kant or Hume (or Hegel or Foucault or Berkeley or Kierkegaard)? If you are a graduate student in philosophy or are writing a technical journal article refuting mistaken philosophies or defending reason from attack, you might have a reason. Another reason might be if you don't yet understand in essentials the history of philosophy and its impact on the world.

Still another reason might be that you would like to discuss and debate Kant's or Hume's ideas, and would prefer not to appear to be a fool when you do so. For some mysterious reason, people who vociferously argue for a particular interpretation or valuation of work they've never read themselves are often taken to be fools by those who hear them pontificate.

But here is the point: Rand and Peikoff point out that Kant and Hume have *fundamentally and thoroughly false philosophies*. They are not saying things, in the central thrust of their writings which are true. (1) Kant says reason cannot know reality and is stuck in the world of appearances (the phenomenal world) and can't know reality as it actually is (the noumenal world). And then he writes whole (hard to follow and with technical jargon, apparently) books to defend this and apply it to art, science, other areas. (2) Hume attacks causality, e.g., saying he observes a person letting go of something and it falling to the ground but doesn't 'see' a causal connection like a little red flag popping out, saying 'gravity always works'.

Actually, here is the point: Michael says somewhere on another thread that he hopes denizens of OL will check not only their own premises, but also those of people they read and learn from, like Rand and Peikoff. Are you content to parrot the interpretation of Kant or Hume promoted by your teachers without reading Kant and Hume for yourself, finding out first hand what the basis of your teachers' interpretation is, and discerning for yourself whether you agree with it? Or would you rather know what you're talking about?

I'd say, for example, on the basis of my own reading of Kant in the early '70s, that Rand's and Peikoff's interpretation of his work is oversimplified and invariably puts the worst possible face on anything at all ambiguous in Kant's writing. Phil tried to argue with me about this one evening in San Jose years ago (we were attending a science fiction convention together), but he had rather a hard time of it, because, not having read Kant himself, he had no way of knowing whether the Rand/Peikoff interpretation was as I said it was. The Rand/Peikoff interpretation of Kant was all Phil knew about Kant. I dare say it's still all he knows about Kant; he can't spare the precious time he needs to devote to studying the culture of China. Fine, I say. Let him learn all about the culture of China and remain ignorant of Kant. The problem is, he wants to have it both ways - ignore Kant's books, study the culture of China instead, but then try to pass himself off as somebody who knows something about Kant and can debate the correctness of an interpretation of his work.

I should probably add that I read Kant in English translation, rather than in the original German. (One of my German professors in college told me that even Germans often prefer to read Kant in English, because he's clearer that way. I can't say whether this is true, of course, never having read Kant in German. I expect Phil can tell you, however.) I can testify that, even in English, Kant's meaning is often rather opaque, at least in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment. My own feeling is that this was because Kant had happened upon an insight about epistemology that no one he knew of had ever formulated before, and he was struggling to articulate what he had suddenly grasped. He didn't do a particularly good job of it, in the end, and I think he also badly misjudged some of the implications of the undeniable truth he had grasped. (No matter. One glance at the special theory of relativity should convince you that the same might be said of Albert Einstein.)

It's possible that somewhere buried in the books of the really bad thinkers there are buried one or two nuggets of truth or beauty. But you'd have to -find- that needle in that haystack. Context: There is limited time a life to read all the wonderful, beautiful, helpful, mind-expanding books out there.

Context: Phil can't possibly know how many nuggets of truth or beauty are "buried" in books he hasn't read. He can't possibly know whether the search for such nuggets is more like the search for a needle in a haystack or the search for a blueberry in a blueberry muffin. It's true that you have only so long to live, and you'll never be able to read all the books that have already been written, and people like me are busily writing more of the damned things even as we discuss this. Do pick and choose what you devote your time to reading. Do take into account your limited time on this Earth.

But if you choose not to read something, don't then posture as an expert on its contents.

JR

P.S. There is much of value in Hume, though admittedly not in his writings about causality.

[Selene]

Phil:

"It's possible that somewhere buried in the books of the really bad thinkers there are buried one or two nuggets of truth or beauty. But you'd have to -find- that needle in that haystack. Context: There is limited time a life to read all the wonderful, beautiful, helpful, mind-expanding books out there."

Since you have so many kind and humane ways of expressing yourself, I thought I would suggest that you enroll in an Evelyn Woods program.

When you graduate, we can get you a new seeing eye dog for graduation,

Adam

[Christopher]

Jeff, I'd actually like to read Kant myself. Just from the little I've heard, isn't his position that there are no premises; rather, the system is definitive if and only if it exists without conflict.

To me at least, that is my interpretation: that Kant, recognizing the human inability to see reality without some bias, sought a decisively logical approach. If so, then Rand's big beef would be the idea of non-objectivity that Kant claims. Of course, Kant is just seeking objectivity through a different system than the senses. The topic I recently begun on sensibilia/intelligibilia is precisely an attempt to determine whether a system founded completely on sensibilia (apprehension through the senses) is reductionistic.

[Selene]

Jeff, I'd actually like to read Kant myself. Just from the little I've heard, isn't his position that there are no premises; rather, the system is definitive if and only if it exists without conflict.

To me at least, that is my interpretation: that Kant, recognizing the human inability to see reality without some bias, sought a decisively logical approach. If so, then Rand's big beef would be the idea of non-objectivity that Kant claims. Of course, Kant is just seeking objectivity through a different system than the senses. The topic I recently begun on sensibilia/intelligibilia is precisely an attempt to determine whether a system founded completely on sensibilia (apprehension through the senses) is reductionistic.

Chris:

This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - nice website - http://plato.stanford.edu/

"More specifically, Kant develops a philosophy of science that departs from (i) broadly empiricist views — such as David Lewis's, according to which purely contingent events in space and time (along with considerations of simplicity, etc.) determine what the laws of nature ultimately are — and (ii) certain necessitarian views — such as David Armstrong's, according to which the laws of nature consist of necessitation relations between universals, which place constraints on what events occur in space and time. Kant does so by holding that (i) scientific laws do involve necessity, but that (ii) this necessity is based not on (purely metaphysical and hence inaccessible) relations between universals, but rather on certain subjective, a priori conditions under which we can experience objects in space and time."

Adam

[Philip Coates]

> Still another reason might be that you would like to discuss and debate Kant's or Hume's ideas, and would prefer not to appear to be a fool when you do so. [Jeff]

Let's extend this principle: I can't argue about the theory Darwin expressed in Origin of Species unless I've read the book? I can't talk with certainty about about Newton's three laws of motion unless I've read the original source material?

> Are you content to parrot the interpretation of Kant or Hume promoted by your teachers without reading Kant and Hume for yourself, finding out first hand what the basis of your teachers' interpretation is, and discerning for yourself whether you agree with it?

The point of my Darwin and Newton examples is that one can't read every original scientist or thinker. Knowledge has grown too vast. That's why - until we see a contradiction or unconvincing argument - we (often) rely on the consensus of specialists who summarize and discuss (until we smell a rat like the 'consensus' over global warming). It is perfectly proper to use **Secondary sources**, especially when they say the same thing --- such as 1. textbooks (for Darwin, Newton) or reference works: 2. encyclopedias or dictionaries of philosophy or 3. histories of philosophy (Kant, Hume, Plato, Aristotle), etc. 4. Textbooks, in some cases.

Hardly parroting, don't you think?

> Phil tried to argue with me about this one evening in San Jose years ago (we were attending a science fiction convention together)...The Rand/Peikoff interpretation of Kant was all Phil knew about Kant. I dare say it's still all he knows about Kant . . .

Jeff, it might have been all I could muster off the top of my head at the time, especially if you had fed me one of those obnoxious dark black beers you love. I am not good at recall of detail of that kind without access to books, merely the conclusion my study of those details left with me. But over the years I *have* checked Rand/Peikoff against references...the consensus of historians of philosophy and reference works that I read. Sorry, I'm going to take those experts over your view that R/P misstate what K/H's views are. Especially if you've been drinking beer you have to eat with a spoon.

The summaries of K and H, while terse and harshly worded, are pretty uncontroversial. The same for Plato, Aristotle, and much of the broad trends in philosophy. And, yes, I have done reading in that area. Probably as much as you and many other 'critics' of the Oist view of the history of philosophy have. While one can nitpick a detail or two, Peikoff and Rand's broad, simplified view of the history of philosophy **is correct**.

> He can't possibly know whether the search for such nuggets is more like the search for a needle in a haystack or the search for a blueberry in a blueberry muffin

You are nitpicking my metaphor, but let's stay with it a moment: By your very statement in your post, Kant is hard to decipher, so that alone makes reading him like wading through a haystack, doesn't it? And, I've read enough about K, assessing, reviewing K to know that everybody else has made the same point about wading through tons of jargon. Plus, when someone writes multiple books and you are looking for nuggets, that's hundreds of hours of reading, so yes, clearly my metaphor is reasonable. Not just here but anytime you have to wade through a lot of chapters or books of something sources and reference and texts tell you is largely false.

> if you choose not to read something, don't then posture as an expert on its contents.

Where did I say I was an 'expert'? Secondary sources, remember.

> There is much of value in Hume, though admittedly not in his writings about causality.

I often read from people like Jeff and many posters in the 'open Objectivism' wing who claim that Rand and Peikoff didn't know philosophy, slimed a major thinker unjustifiably, that there is lots of value in that philosopher. That R and P didn't do their homework...yada, yada. I guess if you repeat a claim enough times, people begin to believe it!

I certainly admit the possibility of error. R and P are hardly infallible. But you have to present evidence. You have to show it specifically, and concretely. And their being wrong has not been proven out in the cases I've looked into, though. And Im pretty thorough. In the case of Kant, he was known to be a classical liberal and to have some proper ideas about astronomy. So that may be of value to read. But, on the other hand, I can get those values from Mises, Hayek, Newton, Galileo. So, I need more than a terse one sentence vague claim WITHOUT EXAMPLES. It's a lot of work to do this, but if Jeff or any of the others who claim 'there is lots of value' could simply BRING IT HERE! Not a whole book, but not a single sentence either. **quote at least a page of this great value** in David Hume or whoever we illiterate, lazy, unwilling to read, psuedo-expert, philistine, know-nothing, blueberry muffin-eating neanderthal Randroids are supposed to have irresponsibly overlooked.

(In our kowtowing, unquestioning, whim worshipful devotion to our sainted intellectual master.)

Don't just tell or claim, *show*. (I'm perfectly willing to wait patiently. As I say I've got lots of other things to read.)

[Dragonfly]

> Still another reason might be that you would like to discuss and debate Kant's or Hume's ideas, and would prefer not to appear to be a fool when you do so. [Jeff]

Let's extend this principle: I can't argue about the theory Darwin expressed in Origin of Species unless I've read the book? I can't talk with certainty about about Newton's three laws of motion unless I've read the original source material?

Not a good comparison: evolution theory and classical mechanics are scientific theories, which are independent of the specific formulation by their originators. Only if you want to discuss Darwin's specific formulation, i.e. the historical theory, then you should of course have read The Origin of Species (which anyone who claims to be an educated person should have read anyway). On the other hand a specific philosophy is not universal, but linked to a specific person. Or do you think people can get sufficient knowledge of Objectivism to be able to judge its merits merely by reading philosophical textbooks by non-Objectivists, without reading Rand's own texts?

[Philip Coates]

Your strained attempt to draw a parallel between the need to read Rand and a need to read Kant is an extremely poor one. Rand's philosophy is essentially true and scientific. Even if you are not an Oist, you can still see that there is lots of value there. In all kinds of ways, including literaray and matters of close argument and precise 'formulation'. By extreme contrast, Kant's is not fundamentally a proper view of reality to say the very least but a bizarre, whacked-out fantasy world he created.

Once you see that (again, through experts, respectable secondary sources) - and if you are not a specialist with a professional need - why would you feel an obligation to spend hundreds of hours reading the turgid Kant in the original, hunting for the -hypothetical- nugget of insight which may or may not be there? There still needs to be **hard evidence that Kant is sprinkled with lots of nuggets of good insights (or high literary quality or whatever)** -before- it becomes mandatory for 'any educated person' to not be satisfied with accounts of him in encyclopedias or histories.

And I'm waiting for that one quoted page of hard evidence on Kant's value - from you or Jeff. Or any other Kant defenders. (It could contain valid, original contributions to philosophy -or- great literary passages -or- poetic and inspiring writing. Just some proof that he's mandatory reading.)

"independent of the specific formulation"? Once again, you -still- need to provide grounds to believe that his specific formulation is important here, in contrast to Rand which clearly is.

And did you miss my crucial commonsense point about the knowledge explosion and the simple inability to read everything in the original as opposed to -shorter accounts- such as summaries by experts and in textbooks or secondary sources?

[Selene]

Your strained attempt to draw a parallel between the need to read Rand and a need to read Kant is an extremely poor one. Rand's philosophy is essentially true and scientific. Even if you are not an Oist, you can still see that there is lots of value there. In all kinds of ways, including literaray and matters of close argument and precise 'formulation'. By extreme contrast, Kant's is not fundamentally a proper view of reality to say the very least but a bizarre, whacked-out fantasy world he created.

Once you see that (again, through experts, respectable secondary sources) - and if you are not a specialist with a professional need - why would you feel an obligation to spend hundreds of hours reading the turgid Kant in the original, hunting for the -hypothetical- nugget of insight which may or may not be there? There still needs to be **hard evidence that Kant is sprinkled with lots of nuggets of good insights (or high literary quality or whatever)** -before- it becomes mandatory for 'any educated person' to not be satisfied with accounts of him in encyclopedias or histories.

And I'm waiting for that one quoted page of hard evidence on Kant's value - from you or Jeff. Or any other Kant defenders. (It could contain valid, original contributions to philosophy -or- great literary passages -or- poetic and inspiring writing. Just some proof that he's mandatory reading.)

"independent of the specific formulation"? Once again, you -still- need to provide grounds to believe that his specific formulation is important here, in contrast to Rand which clearly is.

And did you miss my crucial commonsense point about the knowledge explosion and the simple inability to read everything in the original as opposed to -shorter accounts- such as summaries by experts and in textbooks or secondary sources?

Maybe you should underline more or highlight in red or stamp your feet and hold your breath.

I do not think anyone who can read misses your points.

Adam

[Dragonfly]

Your strained attempt to draw a parallel between the need to read Rand and a need to read Kant is an extremely poor one. Rand's philosophy is essentially true and scientific.

Bwahaha! This is better than satire! With such friends Objectivism needs no enemies.

"independent of the specific formulation"? Once again, you -still- need to provide grounds to believe that his specific formulation is important here, in contrast to Rand which clearly is.

Oh really? And what are the grounds to believe that Rand's specific formulation is important and that of other philosophers is not? Because of your ex cathedra statements?

And did you miss my crucial commonsense point about the knowledge explosion and the simple inability to read everything in the original as opposed to -shorter accounts- such as summaries by experts and in textbooks or secondary sources?

And why should a shorter account of Objectivism in textbooks or secondary sources not be sufficient?

[jriggenbach]

Let's extend this principle: I can't argue about the theory Darwin expressed in Origin of Species unless I've read the book? I can't talk with certainty about about Newton's three laws of motion unless I've read the original source material?

You can't argue about the interpretation any particular writer or speaker places on a particular passage from Darwin or Newton, because you've never read those passages and don't know what you're talking about.

The point of my Darwin and Newton examples is that one can't read every original scientist or thinker.

No one is asking you to do so. I am merely asking you to acknowledge what you do and don't know and to refrain from presenting yourself as knowledgeable about the details of works you've never read.

. . . over the years I *have* checked Rand/Peikoff against references...the consensus of historians of philosophy and reference works that I read. . . . The summaries of K and H, while terse and harshly worded, are pretty uncontroversial.

Actually, they're quite controversial. I've never encountered any actual expert on Kant who didn't regard the Rand/Peikoff take on his work as preposterous and ridiculous. The same for Hume. To read Rand and Peikoff, you'd think the man had never written anything other than his comments on causality.

. . . when someone writes multiple books and you are looking for nuggets, that's hundreds of hours of reading . . .

I'm beginning to wonder if you don't have a somewhat inflated conception of how long it takes to read a book. There's another post in this thread in which you go on and on about the "hundreds of hours" it would take to read somebody else you want to be famous for knowing all about without having actually read. Context check: not long ago, I read the entirety of Ludwig von Mises's Human Action (a much longer book than any book by Kant) aloud, into a microphone. The resulting recording runs forty-five hours. I was reading at about 135-150 words per minute. The average person's silent reading speed (not skimming, but reading for comprehension) is 250-400 words per minute. It would take maybe twenty-five hours, then - not "hundreds of hours" - to read about a thousand pages of high-level material, more pages than anybody here is asking you to read of Kant or Hume, or (probably) the two of them together.

JR

[Selene]

Phil:

Could you possibly keep it a secret that you are a follower of Ayn, it would really help the spread of her ideas. Maybe I could interest you in becoming a Shaker?

Now, this absolutely amazes me when I read it coming allegedly from a rational, knowledgeable mind. It infuriates me when that "mind" claims to represent Ayn because if any statement would be anathema it is the following:

"...the consensus of historians of philosophy and reference works that I read..."

I believe that we have another consensus arguer on OL, but she is not a Randian.

Let us see...

it was a consensus that the world was flat...

it was a consensus that global warming was caused by man made pollution...

it was a consensus that Ayn Rand was a fascist...

it was a consensus that the German culture was fundamentally psychologically sick... OK OK sometimes the consensus is correct by the law of averages.

Adam

[Darrell Hougen]

I'm beginning to wonder if you don't have a somewhat inflated conception of how long it takes to read a book. There's another post in this thread in which you go on and on about the "hundreds of hours" it would take to read somebody else you want to be famous for knowing all about without having actually read. Context check: not long ago, I read the entirety of Ludwig von Mises's Human Action (a much longer book than any book by Kant) aloud, into a microphone. The resulting recording runs forty-five hours. I was reading at about 135-150 words per minute. The average person's silent reading speed (not skimming, but reading for comprehension) is 250-400 words per minute. It would take maybe twenty-five hours, then - not "hundreds of hours" - to read about a thousand pages of high-level material, more pages than anybody here is asking you to read of Kant or Hume, or (probably) the two of them together.

That seems like a very high rate of reading to me. Sure, if I was reading a Robert Ludlum novel, I could probably read it that fast, but I don't think I could read and comprehend Kant at that speed. And, yes, I have read a little Kant, though I won't claim to be an expert.

To me, reading a philosophy book for comprehension is sort of like reading a Calculus text book. I have a thousand page calculus text book sitting on my shelf at home. Are you telling me that, knowing little about calculus, you could read it in 25 hours and at the end of that time you would know differential and integral calculus and elementary differential equations?

Color me incredulous.

Darrell

[merjet]

Context check: not long ago, I read the entirety of Ludwig von Mises's Human Action (a much longer book than any book by Kant) aloud, into a microphone. The resulting recording runs forty-five hours.

The first 15 chapters (the book has 39) from his effort is available here.

[Barbara Branden]

Jeff: "Actually, here is the point: Michael says somewhere on another thread that he hopes denizens of OL will check not only their own premises, but also those of people they read and learn from, like Rand and Peikoff. Are you content to parrot the interpretation of Kant or Hume promoted by your teachers without reading Kant and Hume for yourself, finding out first hand what the basis of your teachers' interpretation is, and discerning for yourself whether you agree with it? Or would you rather know what you're talking about?

"I'd say, for example, on the basis of my own reading of Kant in the early '70s, that Rand's and Peikoff's interpretation of his work is oversimplified and invariably puts the worst possible face on anything at all ambiguous in Kant's writing."

Wonders will never cease. I agree with Jeff. And I have read Kant and Hume.

Phil, in addition to Jeff's point, consider this: that no thinker works and thinks in a vacuum, and that in order to evaluate a philosopher's ideas, you have to know what were the problems and issues he was attempting to solve, the apparent philosophical dilemmas he was attempting to deal with. The genius of Plato and the early Greeks, for instance, lay not so much in their answers to philosophical questions as in their definitions of what constituted important philosophical questions that any thinker must seek answers to. This is equally relevant to Rand. One of the reasons we admire her is for her recognition that there had not been a moral defense of capitalism, that it was assumed its only justification was practicality, and that a moral defense must be provided if freedom was to be protected. Or, in the area of epistemology, whether we agree with all her conclusions or not, we admire her for recognizing that a philosophical defense of the human mind's capacity to arrive at truth was urgently required in order to end the philosophical ascendancy of relativism and subjectivism. Similarly with Kant and Hume. In order to evaluate their work -- or to evaluate so-called experts' descriptions of their work -- you have to be reasonably familiar with the philosophical thinking of their times and, most particularly, with what philosophical problems they believed required solutions. In a word, you have to read them.

Barbara

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Still No Evidence

> You can't argue about the interpretation any particular writer or speaker places on a particular passage from Darwin or Newton, because you've never read those passages [Jeff]

1. I nowhere spoke of the "interpretation of particular passages" - just the overall theories and reasoning behind them of both men which are common knowledge. And in every textbook.

> presenting yourself as knowledgeable about the details of works you've never read [Jeff]

2. I nowhere presented myself as knowledgeable about details of the works, merely overall essentials of the theory or summaries of the reasoning on the level of what can be gotten from secondary sources. I keep making the argument that in many cases experts, specialists, reference works are sufficient for that. Was I unclear in how I stated this point?

> And what are the grounds to believe that Rand's specific formulation is important [DF]

3. Because this is an Oist list and we've all read Rand. Doh!

> and that of other philosophers is not? [DF]

4. I nowhere said that the formulations of "other philosophers" are never important. I spoke of the need to present some evidence in regard to Kant.

> I've never encountered any actual expert on Kant who didn't regard the Rand/Peikoff take on his work as preposterous and ridiculous. The same for Hume.

5. That's an argument from authority and also from limited personal experience.

> Maybe you should..stamp your feet...Could you possibly keep it a secret that you are a follower of Ayn [Troll]

Up yours, asshole.

> it was a consensus that the world was flat... [therefore what? no consensus of historians of philosophy and reference works is ever valid? too silly to rebut]

[Barbara Branden]

Phil: "Rand's philosophy is essentially true and scientific. Even if you are not an Oist, you can still see that there is lots of value there. In all kinds of ways, including literaray and matters of close argument and precise 'formulation.'"

You also said: "One can't read every original scientist or thinker. Knowledge has grown too vast. That's why - until we see a contradiction or unconvincing argument - we (often) rely on the consensus of specialists who summarize and discuss (until we smell a rat like the 'consensus' over global warming). It is perfectly proper to use 'Secondary sources', especially when they say the same thing ..."

You can't have it both ways, Phil. If you first went to the consensus of specialists in philosophy for information about Rand, you would find them denying every word you said about her above. If you relied on secondary sources, "especially when they say the same thing," you would never read Rand.

Barbara

[Philip Coates]

> If you first went to the consensus of specialists in philosophy for information about Rand, you would find them denying every word you said about her above. [barbara]

Yes, but they are not specialists in Rand, nor has the field yet read and studied her carefully. They often still think of her as a novelist not a systematic philosopher.

In the case of Kant and Hume (or Plato and Aristotle), by contrast, there have been enough centuries and enough research and commentary - and perhaps also a lack of feeling outraged by their views - that the secondary sources have had time to study and iron out disagreements - and I've read several of their works on K and H - I've seen pretty much the same general overview of their basic positions (as well as what historical context and previous ideas they were responding to).

So, no, consensus of the experts in a field is not always right. Witness global warming.

[jriggenbach]

I nowhere spoke of the "interpretation of particular passages" - just the overall theories and reasoning behind them of both men which are common knowledge. And in every textbook.

And these theories and the reasoning behind them didn't occur in particular passages. I see.

I nowhere presented myself as knowledgeable about details of the works, merely overall essentials of the theory or summaries of the reasoning on the level of what can be gotten from secondary sources. I keep making the argument that in many cases experts, specialists, reference works are sufficient for that. Was I unclear in how I stated this point?

No. The point's just worthless, that's all. Your statement of it was flawless, however.

"I've never encountered any actual expert on Kant who didn't regard the Rand/Peikoff take on his work as preposterous and ridiculous. The same for Hume."

That's an argument from authority and also from limited personal experience.

This is probably because it was offered in response to an identical argument from authority (Rand's view of Kant is uncontroversial) based on identically limited personal experience. Perhaps its point was the variability of personal experience? (Just a thought.)

JR

[Philip Coates]

Still waiting for some paragraphs of Kant's insight and value.

Still waiting for that evidence.

[Selene]

Still waiting for some paragraphs of Kant's insight and value.

Still waiting for that evidence.

Here Phil:

http://plato.stanfor...ries/kant-mind/

You can start with this.

Then here is the Questia link which has about 350 pages of commentary and analysis.

http://www.questia.c...&docId=10436182 <<<<oops lol <<<< must be a troll thing

Adam

Post script:

Betcha you can't eat just one!

Edited August 24, 2009 by Selene

[Brant Gaede]

Rand-Peikoff went off the tracks with Kant if for no other reason they never presented good data to support the Objectivist position of his monstrous evil if not power. I could never understand how that position went hand in hand with the core Randian position--the absolute core--of the impotence of evil, which in itself sort of drove a truck over actual human psychology. I do think it re-enforced Rand's position about how powerful and important philosophy was and hence the importance of her philosophy in the general scheme of things.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

> Here Phil: http://plato.stanfor...ries/kant-mind/ Then here is the Questia link which has about 350 pages of commentary and analysis. http://www.questia.c...&docId=10436182 [Troll]

......

No, no, no, no!!!! You do NOT just post and link to HUNDREDS OF PAGES and wave your hands and say Kant's value is in there somewhere. Go hunt for it.

What the eff is the matter with you?

That's like the sleazy lawyers, who being presented with a Discovery Motion demanded by the court to if there are any statements about x and to hand them over to opposing council. So they wheel in a forklift with boxes and boxes of stuff, knowing that the opposing lawyers will never be able to find the 'smoking gun statement' buried in there somewhere in any reasonable period of time.

If there is actual evidence, it has to be a few paragraphs of -quotation- of K saying valuable, illuminating, perceptive, or literary things. Otherwise, you can say oh no, it's on page 77 or oh no, look on page 200..or gee it's in there somewhere.

And of course, you didn't actually read all those pages tonight and know of your own firsthand knowledge that there is something in there which either is a piece of great insight from Kant -or- proof that Rand and Peikoff misinterpreted him.

Did you?