Kant and Hume

[Philip Coates]

> 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

Brant, I agree with you that R and P's statement that Kant was the most evil man in history is an arbitrary leap. It's ridiculous to presume that he was deliberately trying to destroy everything built upon reason, to create a new dark age, etc.

What I've long observed about Rand and Peikoff is that they could be brilliantly insightful philosophically, able to reduce something complex - like the ideas of Plato or Kant or Hume or the pragmatists or the existentialist or the linguistic analysts - to simple and accurate essentials but, by the same token, the simplification tends to go off the rails when they psychologize about the motivations of people they never met.

(They are right about his power, though.)

[Selene]

> 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 demanding if there are any statements about x, who 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.

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?

Tonight? Nope. I was just doing some painting by numbers stuff - #2 is green - I had a lot of trouble with the numbering system.

You are, in an amazingly banal way,...quite emotional.

Adam

Edited August 24, 2009 by Selene

[jriggenbach]

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

Still waiting for that evidence.

Don't wait for me; I ain't comin'. I devoted a few weeks (a couple of months, maybe) to studying Kant back in 1972 or 1973 - thirty-six or thirty-seven years ago. To find one or more of your nuggets for you, I'd have to re-read what I read back then, and at the moment, I simply don't have the time. I'm struggling to finish up a book manuscript that's already grossly late and has been stuck in its last chapter for months. I need to do some major work on my library if I want to avoid ending up having thousands of volumes and four file cabinets full of clippings and documnents and being unable to find anything at all in all those holdings.

And anyway, it really doesn't work the way you seem to suppose it does. What I remember getting out of reading Kant wasn't exposure to long, unrelenting swathes of Philosophically Incorrect theory, interrupted now and then by brief insightful passages on this, that, or the other. What I got was a first-hand understanding of why various commentators on Kant (including Rand and Peikoff) understood his work in the ways they did. I remember coming on passages that made me say, "Now I see why Rand says what she does; given her way of looking at things, that's certainly one plausible interpretation of this somewhat ambiguous passage. On the other hand, I can see another interpretation that seems to me equally plausible . . . ." And so forth. Reading Kant helped me understand why later writers thought of themselves as Kantians or neo-Kantians, though they did not hold that "reason . . . is stuck in the world of appearances (the phenomenal world) and can't know reality as it actually is (the noumenal world)." For example, does Ludwig von Mises strike you as an adherent of any such doctrine as that? Or is Human Action also not included in your list of what you need to bother to read for yourself?

If you don't want to read Kant, don't read Kant. Read what you want to read. I wash my hands of the matter.

JR

[jriggenbach]

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

Reading speed will vary from reader to reader and from one type of material to another. Some people read about as slowly as a speaking voice when they're studying. All I meant by my comparison is that the average silent reading speed is roughly double the average speed reading aloud. So even the forty-five hours it takes me to read Human Action aloud, though far short of the "hundreds of hours" Phil is afraid to having to devote to a Philosophically Incorrect author, is also probably longer than the time it would take many people to read the book silently.

JR

[John Day]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. For the time being, I'll probably forgo Kant's works because it doesn't seem worth it to go through hundreds of pages of incompressible dreck just to find a few nuggets of information. Based on I've gone over, his epistemology doesn't seem that bad, but his notions of duty and ethics are a complete mess.

[Philip Coates]

> Phil is afraid to having to devote to a Philosophically Incorrect author

Jeff, that's not a fair representation of what I said.

[Christopher]

Hey, if you kan't read Kant, don't (f)hume too much about it. I kan't read Kant either, not because I kan't read, just because I have a wicked enkantment on me. Kantcha understand that? After all, I'm just as Hume-an as the rest of us.

[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

Reading speed will vary from reader to reader and from one type of material to another. Some people read about as slowly as a speaking voice when they're studying. All I meant by my comparison is that the average silent reading speed is roughly double the average speed reading aloud. So even the forty-five hours it takes me to read Human Action aloud, though far short of the "hundreds of hours" Phil is afraid to having to devote to a Philosophically Incorrect author, is also probably longer than the time it would take many people to read the book silently.

JR

Even the speed at which a person reads out loud might be an over estimate of the speed with which one reads a difficult book for comprehension. I often reread a sentence or paragraph several times if I don't understand what an author is saying. And, a single reading is probably not enough for something particularly difficult. I also have a hard time paying attention when I know that an author has made glaring mistakes earlier in his presentation. Philosophers have a tendency to pile more and more preposterous conclusions on a defective foundation.

Kant's argument for the existence of a noumenal world seems to revolve around the idea that the reason we perceive the world as three-dimensional is because of a bias in our sense of vision. He seems incapable of comprehending the idea that we might actually learn that the world is three-dimensional through experience or reason that the world is three-dimensional on the basis of the evidence of our senses. Of course, human stereo vision, by which I mean the human ability to see in 3-D based on the triangulation of the positions of surface markings seen by both eyes, is an innate ability, but it would not have evolved if it did not enhance our ability to navigate the real world.

Evolution itself may be thought of as a learning algorithm that modifies a population of organisms over time based on their fitness for survival. Kant, of course, did not know of Darwin's results, having died five years before Darwin was born, so he could not have been expected to know about evolution. Nevertheless, if Kant's conclusions seem absurd in the light of our present state of knowledge, we should simply reject them and move on. And if his mistaken conclusions about our sense of sight are used as the foundation for an entire philosophy that rejects our ability to know the world as it is, then we should junk the rest of his philosophy too.

It is apparent just from looking at the Wikipedia article that Kant made many other errors as well. I guess I'm not sure why people on this site are so opposed to relying, at least in part, on secondary sources. Secondary sources often have extended quotes of the original author and they simplify looking for the material. Yes, they might misrepresent what the author said, so the errors might not be in the original, but one can judge the accuracy of the secondary accounts if one has read some of the original work. One need not read all of the original in order to understand the arguments being put forth, and if a person has a question, he can always refer back to the original. Also, secondary sources often make arguments more clearly than the original.

Darrell

Edited August 24, 2009 by Darrell Hougen

[jriggenbach]

Even the speed at which a person reads out loud might be an over estimate of the time it takes to read a difficult book for comprehension.

I suspect you mean "underestimate."

I often reread a sentence or paragraph several times if I don't understand what an author is saying.

I've done the same, including with Kant.

And, a single reading is probably not enough for something particularly difficult. I also have a hard time paying attention when I know that an author has made glaring mistakes earlier in his presentation. Philosophers have a tendency to pile more and more preposterous conclusions on a defective foundation.

Okay. Have we reached "hundreds of hours" yet?

Kant's argument for the existence of a noumenal world seems to revolve around the idea that the reason we perceive the world as three-dimensional is because of a bias in our sense of vision.

Kant's argument for the existence of a noumenal world rests on far more than just that. It rests on a detailed analysis of the nature of human consciousness and the extensive "filtering" it imposes on our experience of the world in which we live.

He seems incapable of comprehending the idea that we might actually learn that the world is three-dimensional through experience or reason that the world is three-dimensional on the basis of the evidence of our senses.

I'd say that's one of his errors, yes.

. . . if Kant's conclusions seem absurd in the light of our present state of knowledge, we should simply reject them and move on.

Agreed.

And if his mistaken conclusions about our sense of sight are used as the foundation . . .

As noted above, they aren't.

. . . for an entire philosophy that rejects our ability to know the world as it is, then we should junk the rest of his philosophy too.

(1) Kant's philosophy, properly understood, does not reject our ability to know the world as it is. Kant himself seems (at least at times) to have drawn some such conclusion as that, but as various neo-Kantians in the 20th Century have shown, he was mistaken.

(2) There is much more to Kant's philosophy than merely his views on conceptual knowledge. Many of his views on morality are pretty loathsome, but his views on politics are actually quite libertarian and admirable. And his views on art are of considerable historical interest, because of their later consequences in the work of other thinkers, including Ayn Rand. (It was Kant, for example, who first enunciated the principle that a work of art is not a utilitarian object and has no "use," strictly speaking, but contemplation.)

I guess I'm not sure why people on this site are so opposed to relying, at least in part, on secondary sources.

I don't recall anyone saying that secondary sources shouldn't be relied on in part.

Secondary sources often have extended quotes of the original author . . .

Yes, carefully cherry-picked in most cases (at least when you're dealing with a controversial and obscure thinker like Kant) to justify a particular interpretation of the works under discussion. If you don't read the original, how can you be certain that this isn't the case? How can you be certain that you understand the context in which the author under discussion made the quoted statements?

. . . and they simplify looking for the material. Yes, they might misrepresent what the author said, so the errors might not be in the original, but one can judge the accuracy of the secondary accounts if one has read some of the original work. One need not read all of the original in order to understand the arguments being put forth, and if a person has a question, he can always refer back to the original. Also, secondary sources often make arguments more clearly than the original.

All true. I advise the use of secondary sources when reading a philosopher like Kant - as an extremely useful adjunct to one's careful reading of the original work under study (the Critique of Pure Reason, say, or the Critique of Judgment). Used in this way, secondary sources can be invaluable. Used as a substitute for first hand knowledge of the work(s) in question, they will steer you wrong at least as often as they steer you right.

JR

[Jonathan]

> 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?

Heh.

Here's Rand on "modern art":

"It is highly doubtful that the practitioners and admirers of modern art have the intellectual capacity to understand its philosophical meaning; all they need to do is indulge the worst of their subconscious premises. But their leaders do understand the issue consciously: the father of modern art is Immanuel Kant (see his Critique of Judgment)."

During the past year I've been studying Kant's Critique of Judgment, and I can't say that I've found anything in it which would suggest that Kant is the "father of modern art," at least not "modern art" as Rand means it. In fact, there are passages which suggest that he would think that abstract art is not art; that he would agree with Rand that art must be directly representational. And there are other passages which suggest that many of his views on aesthetics were very similar to Rand's (for the passages to which I'm referring, see the Critique of Judgment).

J

[Selene]

Jonathan:

Interesting that you perceive Kant and libertarians as having common grounds. Does not surprise me as during the 60's and 70's there was a lot of open debate in the libertarian and anarcho capitalist groups that I worked with wherein the "left" and "right" met on issues.

I just looked at this and I would appreciate your input.

As the title of his magnum opus,

The World as Will and Representation

, suggests, Schopenhauer held that we know the world in two different ways, through our representations of objects in space and time and through our experience of our ability to move our own bodies by willing to do so.

In his account of our knowledge of the world through representation, he accepted

the core of Kant's transcendental idealism, the view that the spatial and temporal forms in which experience presents objects to us, as well as the basic structure of the concepts by means of which we think about and judge these objects, above all the category of causality, are impositions of our own minds on our experience, that is, they reflect the structure of our own perception and conception of reality but not any structure that reality has in itself independently of our representation of it.

In his account of our knowledge of the nature of reality through our own will, however, Schopenhauer

rejected Kant's inference that transcendental idealism, while it allows us to

conceive

of certain features of how things may be in themselves by means of our categories, and even to adopt certain

postulates

about them for the sake of our practical reason, that is, morality, completely precludes us from having any actual

knowledge

of them.

"...imposition..." <<<< since you recently read the K man, what denotively did he mean by that word choice?

It has been a few decades or more since I have read the K man.

Thanks.

Adam

Edited August 24, 2009 by Selene

[Darrell Hougen]

Even the speed at which a person reads out loud might be an over estimate of the time it takes to read a difficult book for comprehension.

I suspect you mean "underestimate."

Actually, my original statement didn't make much sense, so I fixed it. Thanks for pointing that out.

I often reread a sentence or paragraph several times if I don't understand what an author is saying.

I've done the same, including with Kant.

And, a single reading is probably not enough for something particularly difficult. I also have a hard time paying attention when I know that an author has made glaring mistakes earlier in his presentation. Philosophers have a tendency to pile more and more preposterous conclusions on a defective foundation.

Okay. Have we reached "hundreds of hours" yet?

Maybe. Maybe not. It depends upon the level of comprehension one is striving to achieve.

Kant's argument for the existence of a noumenal world seems to revolve around the idea that the reason we perceive the world as three-dimensional is because of a bias in our sense of vision.

Kant's argument for the existence of a noumenal world rests on far more than just that. It rests on a detailed analysis of the nature of human consciousness and the extensive "filtering" it imposes on our experience of the world in which we live.

That's amazing. I didn't know that anyone understood human consciousness well enough to do a detailed analysis of it. Anyway, what little of Kant I've read made it look like he was zeroing in on the 3-D interpretation argument.

...

(1) Kant's philosophy, properly understood, does not reject our ability to know the world as it is. Kant himself seems (at least at times) to have drawn some such conclusion as that, but as various neo-Kantians in the 20th Century have shown, he was mistaken.

Let me see if I understand what you're saying: Kant did not properly understand his philosophy, but if someone did, that person would see that his philosophy does not reject our ability to know the world as it is. Is that a fair assessment?

Sorry, but you walked into that one.

(2) There is much more to Kant's philosophy than merely his views on conceptual knowledge. Many of his views on morality are pretty loathsome, but his views on politics are actually quite libertarian and admirable. And his views on art are of considerable historical interest, because of their later consequences in the work of other thinkers, including Ayn Rand. (It was Kant, for example, who first enunciated the principle that a work of art is not a utilitarian object and has no "use," strictly speaking, but contemplation.)

I guess I'm not sure why people on this site are so opposed to relying, at least in part, on secondary sources.

I don't recall anyone saying that secondary sources shouldn't be relied on in part.

Secondary sources often have extended quotes of the original author . . .

Yes, carefully cherry-picked in most cases (at least when you're dealing with a controversial and obscure thinker like Kant) to justify a particular interpretation of the works under discussion. If you don't read the original, how can you be certain that this isn't the case? How can you be certain that you understand the context in which the author under discussion made the quoted statements?

I think it would be hard to take some quotes out of context. An extensive quote carries a lot of context with it. It may not be representative of that person's views. Sometimes people say things that they wish they could retract, but that is not because of a lack of context.

For example, Rand quotes Kant as saying something to the effect (and now I'm paraphrasing from memory) that in order for an act to have moral content, the actor must not knowingly benefit in any way from the act. It must be performed purely from a sense of duty. I don't see how such statements can be taken out of context. And, given your statement that some of Kant's moral views are pretty loathsome, I'm guessing that you would agree that such statements were not taken out of context or carefully cherry picked to make him look bad.

. . . and they simplify looking for the material. Yes, they might misrepresent what the author said, so the errors might not be in the original, but one can judge the accuracy of the secondary accounts if one has read some of the original work. One need not read all of the original in order to understand the arguments being put forth, and if a person has a question, he can always refer back to the original. Also, secondary sources often make arguments more clearly than the original.

All true. I advise the use of secondary sources when reading a philosopher like Kant - as an extremely useful adjunct to one's careful reading of the original work under study (the Critique of Pure Reason, say, or the Critique of Judgment). Used in this way, secondary sources can be invaluable. Used as a substitute for first hand knowledge of the work(s) in question, they will steer you wrong at least as often as they steer you right.

That may be the case, but one must decide, based on a limited amount of information about an author, whether it is worthwhile to study that author more carefully. Rand may have been hostile to Kant, but there are many authors that are sympathetic to him, so, if they are guilty of cherry picking or distortion, such distortions should be favorable to him and encourage the reader to study him more. If, given such favorable distortions, one still finds his views insufficiently interesting, why should that person spend more time studying him? As Phil said, there are many demands on a person's time and that time is limited.

Now, if I constantly met people that were neo-Kantians and I thought that I needed to argue with them, and if I thought I didn't understand their arguments very well, I would study Kant more carefully so that I could understand his arguments and refute them. But, so far, I haven't run into any such people. If his thought pervades the arguments that people make in common parlance, then I so far have had no difficulty refuting them without having to study Kant himself.

Darrell

[Selene]

Folks:

I have been thinking about starting a thread on the philosophy of criticism or critical philosophy which would attempt to discuss what the proper role of criticism should be.

I just through out a certain search and as "coincidence" would have it, the following came up as the first real match.

"Attributed to Immanuel Kant, the critical philosophy movement sees the primary task of philosophy as criticism rather than justification of knowledge; criticism, for Kant, meant judging as to the possibilities of knowledge before advancing to knowledge itself (from the Greek kritike (techne), or "art of judgment"). The initial, and perhaps even sole task of philosophers, according to this view, is not to establish and demonstrate theories about reality, but rather to subject all theories--including those about philosophy itself--to critical review, and measure their validity by how well they withstand criticism.

"Critical philosophy" is also used as just another name for Kant's philosophy itself. Kant said that philosophy's proper enquiry is not about what is out there in reality, but rather about the character and foundations of experience itself. We must first judge how human reason works, and within what limits, so that we can afterwards correctly apply it to sense experience and determine whether it can be applied at all to metaphysical objects."

I can see how this would not set Ayn into cartwheels of happiness.

Adam

Edited August 25, 2009 by Selene

[jriggenbach]

I didn't know that anyone understood human consciousness well enough to do a detailed analysis of it.

I don't know that anyone does. But some people, including Kant, have believed they do, and have undertaken such analyses.

...

(1) Kant's philosophy, properly understood, does not reject our ability to know the world as it is. Kant himself seems (at least at times) to have drawn some such conclusion as that, but as various neo-Kantians in the 20th Century have shown, he was mistaken.

Let me see if I understand what you're saying: Kant did not properly understand his philosophy, but if someone did, that person would see that his philosophy does not reject our ability to know the world as it is. Is that a fair assessment?

Sorry, but you walked into that one.

Well, I guess I'm too stupid to understand what I just walked into. No, Kant did not (apparently) understand the implications of his own philosophy. He made numerous errors in working out those implications. Various people have seen this and have pointed out his errors. What did I walk into?

. . . one must decide, based on a limited amount of information about an author, whether it is worthwhile to study that author more carefully. Rand may have been hostile to Kant, but there are many authors that are sympathetic to him, so, if they are guilty of cherry picking or distortion, such distortions should be favorable to him and encourage the reader to study him more. If, given such favorable distortions, one still finds his views insufficiently interesting, why should that person spend more time studying him?

No reason I can think of. I'd advise that person, however, to avoid trying to pass himself off as knowledgeable on Kant's philosophy.

[jeffrey smith]

Folks:

I have been thinking about starting a thread on the philosophy of criticism or critical philosophy which would attempt to discuss what the proper role of criticism should be.

I just through out a certain search and as "coincidence" would have it, the following came up as the first real match.

"Attributed to Immanuel Kant, the critical philosophy movement sees the primary task of philosophy as criticism rather than justification of knowledge; criticism, for Kant, meant judging as to the possibilities of knowledge before advancing to knowledge itself (from the Greek kritike (techne), or "art of judgment"). The initial, and perhaps even sole task of philosophers, according to this view, is not to establish and demonstrate theories about reality, but rather to subject all theories--including those about philosophy itself--to critical review, and measure their validity by how well they withstand criticism.

"Critical philosophy" is also used as just another name for Kant's philosophy itself. Kant said that philosophy's proper enquiry is not about what is out there in reality, but rather about the character and foundations of experience itself. We must first judge how human reason works, and within what limits, so that we can afterwards correctly apply it to sense experience and determine whether it can be applied at all to metaphysical objects."

I can see how this would not set Ayn into cartwheels of happiness.

Adam

Actually, it seems Rand would have been in general agreement with Kant on this point: discovering what is actually out there is the job of science, not philosophy..

See the section titled Rejection of Cosmology in Chapter 5 of Sciabarra's "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical"

[Philip Coates]

>" 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." [Jeff]

>" I agree with Jeff. And I have read Kant and Hume." [barbara]

Barbara, since Jeff has been unable to give specific examples, do you remember in what way both Rand and Peikoff misstate Kant's philosophy and in what way Kant is 'ambiguous' as Jeff claims?

And how he and she misstate Hume's philosophy, if you think that is also the case?

As an aside, I just thought of another related very important concrete question for Objectivism [which has probably not appeared in 'Passion']: Do you find Rand and Peikoff *generally inaccurate* in their summaries of the views of other major philosophies - Plato, Aristotle, the existentialists, the linguistic analysts, Rousseau, Dewey and the pragmatists, Hegel, Marx . . . and so on? Or just guilty of making an occasional mistake? [You may not have taken Peikoff's 70's courses, so possibly you can only answer with regard to Rand.]

[Xray]

What I remember getting out of reading Kant wasn't exposure to long, unrelenting swathes of Philosophically Incorrect theory, interrupted now and then by brief insightful passages on this, that, or the other.

What exactly is meant by "Philosophically Incorrect"?

[jriggenbach]

What I remember getting out of reading Kant wasn't exposure to long, unrelenting swathes of Philosophically Incorrect theory, interrupted now and then by brief insightful passages on this, that, or the other.

What exactly is meant by "Philosophically Incorrect"?

If I could figure out what's ambiguous or mysterious about it, I could possibly help you. But I don't know what you need to have explained. The meaning seems obvious to me.

JR

[Selene]

What I remember getting out of reading Kant wasn't exposure to long, unrelenting swathes of Philosophically Incorrect theory, interrupted now and then by brief insightful passages on this, that, or the other.

What exactly is meant by "Philosophically Incorrect"?

If I could figure out what's ambiguous or mysterious about it, I could possibly help you. But I don't know what you need to have explained. The meaning seems obvious to me.

JR

Here we go again!

[Xray]

What I remember getting out of reading Kant wasn't exposure to long, unrelenting swathes of Philosophically Incorrect theory, interrupted now and then by brief insightful passages on this, that, or the other.

What exactly is meant by "Philosophically Incorrect"?

If I could figure out what's ambiguous or mysterious about it, I could possibly help you. But I don't know what you need to have explained. The meaning seems obvious to me.

JR

It does not seem obvious to me at all, that's why I asked the question.

If something is labeled as "Philosopically Incorrect", then the person who coined that phrase must have had an idea in mind of what is "philosophically correct", right?

If the meaning of "philosopically correct/philosophically incorrect" is obvious to you, could you explain it here? TIA for your help.

Selene: Here we go again!

Sure we are. We go toward clarification. Which involves checking premises, as always.

Edited September 20, 2009 by Xray

[jriggenbach]

It does not seem obvious to me at all [what the phrase "philosophically incorrect" might mean], that's why I asked the question. If something is labeled as "Philosophically Incorrect", then the person who coined that phrase must have had an idea in mind of what is "philosophically correct", right? If the meaning of "philosopically correct/philosophically incorrect" is obvious to you, could you explain it here? TIA for your help.

It is difficult to escape the suspicion that one is being toyed with. Surely such a question cannot be asked in good faith by anyone born earlier than a few days ago? Nevertheless, I shall answer the question just as though it had been asked in good faith.

(1) There is a phrase, "politically correct." It is, like such equally mysterious and ambiguous phrases as "fried chicken" and "abject stupidity," widely in use. To say that some idea or other is "politically correct" is to say that it is regarded as indisputably, unquestionably true by the members of some particular group or subculture - a group or subculture which is known for its stern intolerance of any deviation from the ideas and ideals its members regard as indisputably, unquestionably true.

(2) The phrase "politically incorrect," unsurprisingly, refers to persons who dispute or question what members of the "politically correct" group regard as indisputable and unquestionable. It refers also to the ideas promoted by these disputers and questioners. Some writers and speakers, eager to let it be known that they don't give a shit what members of the "politically correct" group think, proudly apply the label "politically incorrect" to themselves.

(3) Certain of these proudly "politically incorrect" types tend to take enormous pride in holding the exact opposite of whatever view(s) the members of the "politically correct" group hold on any subject. In this way, they unwittingly create a new strain of "political correctness" which characterizes their own group.

(4) Now, to the context at hand. I'm writing on a discussion forum run by Objectivists for the use of Objectivists. Objectivists make up a subculture which is extremely intolerant of any deviation from the ideas and ideals its members regard as indisputably, unquestionably true. Among Objectivists (with a handful of exceptions) the ideas of Kant and Hume are "philosophically incorrect."

Have you got the hang of it yet? Or do I need to be even more explicit?

JR

[Brant Gaede]

Xray is not an Objectivist, JR. She is something of a troll here. Barely tolerated. So it makes sense she really didn't understand you. In any case, I liked your explanation.

--Brant

on top of Objectivism, not underneath it

[Philip Coates]

A troll is someone who argues just for the sake of arguing, doesn't believe what they are saying, is doing it to sow discord. That has not been Xray on the two threads where I've interacted with her - Great Literature and Linguistics.

I can see she hasn't read the Oist canon and so is trying to parse the meaning of concepts like 'objective' line by line out of context...which, of course, you can't do. It's sort of an academic style to do a line by line reading. You can't do it with Rand, of course. And, just like most of us, when dealing with someone who is engaged in personalities or insulting, competitive instincts kick in to get in a defecating contest and not let your bad faith interlocutor have the last word.

But on those two threads where I've been involved a lot, Xray has shown thoughtfulness, erudition, and a desire to engage on the issues. Not getting sidetracked on putdowns or snarkiness or insults. Or "gotchas" and criticism of your personality postings, unlike a few self-indulgent others who don't seem to have gotten the IATIS principle -->

"It's About The Ideas, Stupid."

Edited September 21, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Phil:

One thing I like about you is that you don't make judgments and categorize people!

On second thought...

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

Xray is something of a troll here. I concede she's not a classical troll; she's much too smart to go that far. Go read her 1300 post thread, Phil, then give us your opinion. There's a reason Michael threw the whole thing into The Garbage Pile.

--Brant

stupid is as stupid does