Based on this explanation it makes a good deal of sense, I would still disagree with it on more Utilitarian grounds but it isn't as crazy as The Internet made it seem.
Though Atlas Shrugged is almost certainly a terrible book nevertheless.
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I've read it. By the way, if you're going to become an Objectivist Jew, you need to give Lisa some advance warning. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: I glanced. Not my cup of tea. Have you read it?
Yes, I have.
I can't say that I enjoyed reading it all that much, but I'm glad that I did read it. It's worth reading.
In that way, it fits one of the definition of a classic -- a book that you don't want to read, but that you want to have read.
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Is doing something because TVTropes said to do it a trope in itself? If so, he'd be killing two birds with one stone.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: YES. Be an objectivist because of TVTropes.
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"Some of her enemies distort her ideas into Strawman Political parodies"
Oh the irony.
"Plato divided philosophy into four primary branches; Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics and Politics. Objectivism has positions in each of these areas"
OK, that first sentence is just false. Plato did not make any such divisions, unless it was in some magical dialogue that I missed, because I was under the impression that I have read all the dialogues and spurious works. I guess there's a secret one that only Objectivists get to read. Already this article's accuracy is in doubt.
"Metaphysics is the study of existence (also known as Ontology)" Metaphyics =/= ontology.
"This position may seem needlessly complicated, but is actually very common; philosophers like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant accepted it, and Kant's own version of representational realism was incredibly influential on his own intellectual successors"
Kant is not so clearly a representational realist. Many articles have argued that he had his own thing going on, and I tend to agree with them. A more pardigmatic example would have been Locke.
Now to defend something Rand said... oddly enough.
"There is however a fourth answer to the Problem of Universals, and it is this fourth answer that Objectivism subscribes to (and it is critically important to grasp this answer in order to make sense of Rand's meta-ethics). This answer is Conceptualism, which states that universals are dependent on both consciousness and reality; the human mind makes abstractions from empirical data. Reality provides the data, the human mind provides the process of abstraction (which is a learned process that must be performed by a specific method).
Note that Rand herself denied she was a Conceptualist. However, as Saint-Andre ((2002), Conceptualism in Abelard and Rand, Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Volume 4, Number 1 (Fall 2002), pp. 123-140) argues, this was because she misunderstood Conceptualism. Objectivist philosopher Dr. Carolyn Ray also identifies Objectivism as Conceptualist in her own doctoral dissertation (see chapter 3) (1998), Identity and Universals: a Conceptualist Approach, Electronically published by Enlightenment, http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/carolynray/diss"
Yes, of course the only reason she denied the theory was because she did not fully understand it! There's a reason that there are very few (if any) contemporary conceptualists. Such false attributions are just bothersome. Particularly when preceded by the declaration that it is "critically important" to accept that she believed this thing... that she denied believing.
The article's treatment of ethics, both Randian and especially non-Randian is a joke, both in its shallowness and inaccuracy. I'm done.
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Blayne Bradley
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If its wrong edit it and post your reasoning in the discussion page Do it! Become a troper!
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: "Plato divided philosophy into four primary branches; Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics and Politics. Objectivism has positions in each of these areas"
Huh?
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: OK, that first sentence is just false. Plato did not make any such divisions, unless it was in some magical dialogue that I missed, because I was under the impression that I have read all the dialogues and spurious works. I guess there's a secret one that only Objectivists get to read.
Strawman. Just because whoever wrote this dumb article makes the claim doesn't mean that Objectivists do. I've read everything Rand wrote, and she certainly never made such a claim.
Furthermore, Objectivism talks about five areas; not four. Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics and Aesthetics.
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Already this article's accuracy is in doubt.
I beg to differ. It's in no doubt at all. It's ridiculous. I mean, I wrote this very brief summary about 15 years ago, and it's a helluva lot more accurate than the tripe on TV Tropes.
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: The article's treatment of ethics, both Randian and especially non-Randian is a joke, both in its shallowness and inaccuracy. I'm done.
QFT (except for your insistance on using "Randian" for "Objectivist", which seems gratuitous to me)
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If one removed all the pages and pages of screed fro "Atlas Shrugged" it is not a bad book. There are worse.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If one removed all the pages and pages of screed fro "Atlas Shrugged" it is not a bad book. There are worse.
Yeah, but there wouldn't be much of a point in reading that book. The evangelizing is the point.
I think that she makes her point with the plot and the characters without needing all the really long speeches.
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Now that I'm done trying to be an impartial philosophical arbiter regarding the article (Lisa, I am sorry that at one point I said Objectivists instead of article-writers--this was imprecise, though I assume that the article-writers are, indeed, Objectivists), I can criticize her writing.
Atlas Shrugged was disgustingly long and disgustingly bad. It was a combination of her "philosophy" and "literary tricks" (I am thinking of the seven hundred phone calls in which you only hear one side of the conversation). That is a sufficient description of the book.
One of my favorite moments came last year in a seminar in which a student raised his hand and said "Ayn Rand said blah blah". The professor, who is the most brilliant professor I have ever had (and this is reflected in his publications) starts laughing a bit and responds, "I'm sorry, but we do real philosophy in this course. I'm not going to discuss that here. If you'd like to talk about your religious beliefs, I would be happy to entertain them during office hours."
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quote:One of my favorite moments came last year in a seminar in which a student raised his hand and said "Ayn Rand said blah blah". The professor, who is the most brilliant professor I have ever had (and this is reflected in his publications) starts laughing a bit and responds, "I'm sorry, but we do real philosophy in this course. I'm not going to discuss that here. If you'd like to talk about your religious beliefs, I would be happy to entertain them during office hours."
What a classy, respectful guy.
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Reading over that, I probably shouldn't have posted it, because it does not come off right in text format. The way he said it was in a joking way and the laugh was more of a chuckle. It came off as more amusing than vindictive in person, though I see that it sounds like it is the other way around the way I wrote it.
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quote:One of my favorite moments came last year in a seminar in which a student raised his hand and said "Ayn Rand said blah blah". The professor, who is the most brilliant professor I have ever had (and this is reflected in his publications) starts laughing a bit and responds, "I'm sorry, but we do real philosophy in this course. I'm not going to discuss that here. If you'd like to talk about your religious beliefs, I would be happy to entertain them during office hours."
What a classy, respectful guy.
Have you been inside a university lately? This is... not surprising behavior.
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Reading over that, I probably shouldn't have posted it, because it does not come off right in text format. The way he said it was in a joking way and the laugh was more of a chuckle. It came off as more amusing than vindictive in person, though I see that it sounds like it is the other way around the way I wrote it.
No, no, it came through just fine. I'm sure most people got a good chuckle out of it. I'm equally sure the individual who was interested in Rand wasn't chuckling, or else was chuckling through clenched teeth.
That's the level of discourse you get in most universities, though, if your worldview isn't "right".
Disclosure: As said elsewhere, I live in the SF Bay Area, so my personal experiences are mostly with universities that even many leftists would consider appallingly left-leaning. But from what I've read, the phenomenon isn't restricted just to California.
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I know that Objectivism isn't taken seriously anymore in the academic philosophical world because it has too many holes and fatal logical flaws, but that's just that professor being a doof
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quote:That's the level of discourse you get in most universities, though, if your worldview isn't "right".
This isn't something I've done a lot of research on, but my sense is that it's not a matter of the worldview being correct. It's a matter of philosophy having rules you need to follow in order to do it correctly (most people think it just means sitting around BSing about stuff) and Ayn Rand doesn't follow them very well.
If I were the teacher I may have made a similar comment for laughs, but I would have followed it up with a more serious explanation as to what philosophy is and why Ayn Rand isn't. The student in question might still be pissed but would feel less "talked down to."
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The reasoning is more along the lines of what Raymond Arnold is saying. But concerning the follow up, eh, this was a graduate seminar. He should have known what philosophy was.
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quote:Reading over that, I probably shouldn't have posted it, because it does not come off right in text format. The way he said it was in a joking way and the laugh was more of a chuckle. It came off as more amusing than vindictive in person, though I see that it sounds like it is the other way around the way I wrote it.
Regardless of how it came off, it's still just sophism - its dismissing an idea with a witty reply rather than any sort of actual logic. A good philosophy teacher should know better than that, although I am aware that some do not.
quote:That's the level of discourse you get in most universities, though, if your worldview isn't "right".
Disclosure: As said elsewhere, I live in the SF Bay Area, so my personal experiences are mostly with universities that even many leftists would consider appallingly left-leaning. But from what I've read, the phenomenon isn't restricted just to California.
I think you are misinterpretting that remark as being motivated by leftist politics. I suspect it is actually motivated more by a reputation that Objectivists have (whether fairly or unfairly) for being not rigorous and dogmatic.
Edit: I see Raymond made this point before I got to it!
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I know that Objectivism isn't taken seriously anymore in the academic philosophical world because it has too many holes and fatal logical flaws, but that's just that professor being a doof
I disagree. It isn't taken seriously in the academic philosophical world (and never has been) because the political implications of it are distasteful to most people in academia. Any "holes" or "fatal logical flaws" aren't really that.
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Lisa, views taken seriously in philosophy include but are not limited to: We have no direct access to the world There is no such thing as the self Suicide may be better than dying of natural causes in most situations The United States has a duty to pay enough reparations to Native Americans that it would bankrupt the nation And, if we're straight Kantian retributivists, rapists ought to be castrated.
These are just a few extreme views that are taken seriously in philosophy. Most of them are somewhat distasteful due to their implications.
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Aristotle is chock full of "holes" and "fatal logical flaws". It's been awhile, but do they still take him seriously?
Honestly, Atlas Shrugged : The Fountainhead as 1984 : Animal Farm. Same idea, different package.
Unlike Orwell, however, I think that the abbreviated form (Fountainhead) worked better for Objectivism. Sure, it's a primer in comparison, but it was much more persuasive and elegant. Except for the objectionable part (but no one said that a genius has to be normal).
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1984 and Animal Farm aren't taken seriously in academic philosophy either.
In any case, concerning Aristotle, it depends who you ask and what parts. Some parts are taken more seriously than others. For example, he developed classical logic. Unless you really get into the thick of things, that is usually sufficient. And many of those who followed Aristotle, and many contemporary Aristotelians, have made it their goal to fill in the holes, acknowledging that these holes exist. But that is because the vast majority of Aristotle's work is logically very tight and there is a stable foundation from which to build. Many academicians, and philosophers in particular, feel that no such foundation exists in Objectivism. This is not to say that it cannot be developed. Marxism was also not taken seriously in academic philosophy until the late 1970s with G.A. Cohen's development of it in a logically satisfactory way. (Of course, problems later arose with it that have made many dismiss it once again, including those who specialized in it).
So all you have to do is publish a sound and synoptic argument for Objectivism that is as tight as Cohen's argument for analytic Marxism.
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Lisa, views taken seriously in philosophy include but are not limited to: We have no direct access to the world There is no such thing as the self Suicide may be better than dying of natural causes in most situations The United States has a duty to pay enough reparations to Native Americans that it would bankrupt the nation And, if we're straight Kantian retributivists, rapists ought to be castrated.
These are just a few extreme views that are taken seriously in philosophy. Most of them are somewhat distasteful due to their implications.
Most of those positions are anything but distasteful to the extreme left. You know that.
We have no direct access to the world There is no such thing as the self
Both of these go pretty much hand in hand with moral relativism. They feed it and feed from it. "There's no real right and wrong." "How can we judge?" "Who are we to say?" Objectivist takes the exact opposite view here, saying that right and wrong is an objective issue, that we can and must judge, that we absolutely do have direct access to the world, and that the self is sacred. All ideas which are anathema to the left.
Suicide may be better than dying of natural causes in most situations
An idea which fits very well with the leftist penchant denying that there's any right and wrong. If everything is simply utilitarian, then of course this is the case.
Interestingly enough, Ayn Rand herself agreed with this. She once said she'd take a bullet for her husband Frank, and explained that life with him was an incomparably greater value for her than life without him. This is one area where Objectivism agrees with the left. Denying the idea that there's a greater principle out there (God) which says we don't have the right to choose what we do with our own bodies and lives.
It's no coincidence that the pro-choice position on abortion is also shared by the left and by Objectivists. It's the very same concept in a different application.
The United States has a duty to pay enough reparations to Native Americans that it would bankrupt the nation
Do I have to explain how this is not an undesirable position to the left?
And, if we're straight Kantian retributivists, rapists ought to be castrated.
Lot of straight Kantian retributivists, are there? I've yet to run into someone with this view who wasn't a rape victim or the friend or family member of a rape victim who I believe would support this in more than a theoretical or at most chemical sense.
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"Both of these go pretty much hand in hand with moral relativism. They feed it and feed from it. "There's no real right and wrong." "How can we judge?" "Who are we to say?" Objectivist takes the exact opposite view here, saying that right and wrong is an objective issue, that we can and must judge, that we absolutely do have direct access to the world, and that the self is sacred. All ideas which are anathema to the left."
Then clearly most philosophers are not leftists, as a recent poll among professional philosophers (If I recall correctly, around 70% of professional philosophers in the English-speaking world responded) had the result of 56.6 percent being moral realists and only 27.7 percent being anti-realists (the rest being other). http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl
" I've yet to run into someone with this view who wasn't a rape victim or the friend or family member of a rape victim who I believe would support this in more than a theoretical or at most chemical sense."
My adviser has advocated this in a book. He is male, and has not been raped.
And concerning your accusation that those who do believe in morality are generally utilitarians:
"Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? Other 301 / 931 (32.3%) Accept or lean toward: deontology 241 / 931 (25.8%) Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 220 / 931 (23.6%) Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 169 / 931 (18.1%)"
Only 23.6% seem to be consequentialists at all, and not all consequentialists are utilitarians.
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Lisa, I'm going to throw some support behind JonHecht here. Those first two statements are not just philosophical conjectures, much of the data from the cognitive sciences back them up. I'm not sure why those notions have anything to do with left/right political issues. And not only are most philosophers moral realists, what's more, there are many in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology who are of the belief that morality can and should be in the purview of the sciences. That these questions can be scientifically quantifiable.
Can we back up for a minute and have you explain how the following statements necessitate moral relativism?
We have no direct access to the world There is no such thing as the self
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I disagree. It isn't taken seriously in the academic philosophical world (and never has been) because the political implications of it are distasteful to most people in academia. Any "holes" or "fatal logical flaws" aren't really that.
No, there are studious proofs showing cleanly and plainly exactly where Rand erred significantly and created bad proofs and, you know, stuff like that. The issue is that you are so preconclusively partial to Objectivism that even if you were shown many of these, you would disregard them entirely just as easily as you would openly disregard evidence to the notion that the earth is more than a few thousand years old.
Objectivism got its share of review in philosophical circles a couple of times and received a pretty in-depth study of the claims it makes. In each case, what they found was pretty consistent. Logical flaws, fudge words, all of it floated by ambiguous criteria for the definition of things like 'rational' and 'man qua man.'
This post is already evidence to that fact: you have already resorted to presuming an assured motive on the part of academics for rebuking objectivism. You'll conclude, internally, that fault could not lie with the philosophy, they're simply rejecting it out of hand because they find it 'distasteful.' The flaws, to you, cannot exist, so you already have an explanation in place.
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ALSO I guess I should point out that post is flat-out uncharitably needling, BUT if it's just uselessly antagonistic, sorry. that it's not so much that I want to berate, it's because I know that you are certainly not an unread proponent of objectivism nor a softie, and that both you and objectivism can certainly take and are used to raw, unalloyed criticism.
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quote:Regardless of how it came off, it's still just sophism - its dismissing an idea with a witty reply rather than any sort of actual logic. A good philosophy teacher should know better than that, although I am aware that some do not.
Nah, it's not sophism. Sophism is endless babble for the sake of endless babble. Some discussions should simply be ignored, no matter whose precious feelings get hurt.
quote:I disagree. It isn't taken seriously in the academic philosophical world (and never has been) because the political implications of it are distasteful to most people in academia. Any "holes" or "fatal logical flaws" aren't really that.
Martyr alert!
You're half right; Rand's logical flaws (real or not) aren't the primary reason why she is ignored. Someone like Spinoza has his own fair share of logical failings, yet he is widely loved. Rand is ignored because she plants her flag on a hill full of positions that philosophy has spent the last three hundred years criticizing, and she displays no knowledge of this criticism. She just says "A=A! Neener neener!"
She's roughly equivalent to a Newtonian physicist hand waving away Einstein and having no clue about what quantum physics is. She was outdated before she put pen to paper, did absolutely no work to revamp her outdated positions in a contemporary context, and was proud of it.
Anyone who's read any professional philosophy since Kant simply doesn't have time in their day for Rand.
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quote:We have no direct access to the world There is no such thing as the self
Both of these go pretty much hand in hand with moral relativism.... that we absolutely do have direct access to the world, and that the self is sacred. All ideas which are anathema to the left.
See, this is what I meant in the above post. Unmediated, direct access to the "world" makes no sense for two reasons. One, the thought of X is a thought of X. Two, the very language of access is non-sense; we always-already in the world.
As for the self... if Nietzsche's criticism of it isn't enough for you, give neurology a little more time. Your precious ego has been in a coma for a hundred years, and guys like Pinker and Dennett are going to pull the plug once and for all.
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Fun coincidence Foust...I just finished reading Pinker's The Blank Slate and moved directly to Dennett's Sweet Dreams!
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quote: Nah, it's not sophism. Sophism is endless babble for the sake of endless babble. Some discussions should simply be ignored, no matter whose precious feelings get hurt.
But if you take that POV, you can get used to dismissing anyone who brings up ideas that are widely deemed as ridiculous without even addressing their arguments. And most of the ideas we view as great and revolutionary today were deemed ridiculous and clearly false at some point, so.
In any case, this student could've interpreted Rand's ideas in an insightful or original way if he were allowed to continue. He could've started an interesting discussion or brought up a relevant point. So what if he was citing someone who had logical flaws in her philosophy? So did a lot of the philosophers commonly viewed as great; that doesn't mean there aren't PARTS of their work that are worth discussing. At the very least, he deserved to be heard out until the very end of his comment. But this professor just dismissed him entirely as soon has he heard "Ayn Rand," apparently. I'd be surprised if he really listened to anything after that, from the way he reacted. That's not a good way to run a class, or to teach students who don't think exactly the same way as you do. So he was "witty," but no one got anything out of that exchange, in terms of actual understanding of philosophy.
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I've really only read The Blank Slate. I'm instinctually sympathetic with neurological reductionism, but Pinker's not a strong enough philosopher to avoid falling into the same sort of idealism that the Churchlands do.
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