Strange Sightings in Objectivism Land

[RightJungle]

While googling “Objectivist Living” to get to it quickly, I noticed an entry in Google that read “Objectivist Learning Theory”. I clicked on it and here is the first sentence from the site:

“Objectivism refers to a class of cognitivist or behaviorist learning theory that view knowledge as some entity existing independent of the mind of individuals.”

Amazing ain’t it?

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Objectivism

[Reidy]

Years ago I looked the word up in a philosophical dictionary, and one definition made it a synonym of "platonism", denoting a belief that concepts are objectively existing entities. This is effectively the same as the one you found. Sometimes ethical philosophy uses it to refer to what Randians call "intricicism", or to a conflation of objectivism and intrincism in their Randian senses.

[Dragonfly]

The term "Objectivism" as a philosophical movement is at least a century older than Rand's version.

[Reidy]

In The Counter-Revolution of Science, 1955, Hayek used the word extensively, saying that it's roughly synonymous with behaviorism or reductivism, the belief that what economics needs to know is all publicly accessible; it's the opposite of subjectivism as Austrian economics understands the term.

[studiodekadent]

"Objectivism" (the word) has many different meanings depending on context.

1) "Objectivism" (Metaphysics) - AKA Realism, the idea that there is a reality that exists mind-independently.

2) "Objectivism" (Epistemology) - AKA Epistemological Realism, the idea that Universals exist mind-independently. Comes in Platonic and Aristotelian flavors.

3) "Objectivism" (Economics) - The belief that market price exists because of an objectively existing thing within that-which-is-priced. Arguably this is the application of definition 2 to the concept of economic value.

4) "Objectivism" (Ayn Rand) - Our philosophy.

Juggling all the different meanings in context can be a difficult manner, especially in an academic context where you have more competent interlocutors.