Editor’s note: This was published in 2010, when FF did not have an editorial board. Since then, the plagiarizing author has not been published by Filipino Freethinkers and the author has amended citations to passages.
Our Editorial Board, which has been in operation for since 2011 has been very careful that such incidents never happen again. We have kept this post up in the interest of transparency.
DISCLAIMER: All the views and opinions expressed in this blog post are all mine and do NOT represent the views and opinions of this community.
Introduction
I seem to encounter a recurring discussion about Ayn Rand and Objectivism but I only had a vague idea what it’s all about. And so, I made some research to find out about it. After reading works of Ayn Rand and Objectivism (Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Virtue of Selfishness), I think I now understand why Rand’s philosophy has such a cult following. To begin with, I found out that Objectivism is just pure philosophy, it’s not science. There is no evidence to support its claims and therefore it is not scientifically justifiable. Let me emphasize that again — it is NOT SCIENCE. It claims to be committed to reason, but without science and evidence to back up its claims, it’s just another belief system — just like any other cult or religion. Pure reason is not enough and it is dangerous. When you have a belief system that claims to know the ABSOLUTE standards of right and wrong, you now have a belief system that is INTOLERANT. And hence, the end of reason and rationality. Absolutism and intolerance are the defining characteristics of a cult, religion, or any other group detrimental to individual freedom (Shermer, M.Why People Believe Believe in Weird Things. 1997 ).
Who is Aynd Rand and What’s Objectivism?
The story of Objectivism starts with Ayn Rand (1905-1982), who is known for her two best-selling novels Fountainhead(1943) and her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged(1957). As far as anyone is concerned, Objectivism refers to the work of Ayn Rand,exclusively. And followers of her philosophy call themselves – Objectivists. With the death of Rand in 1982, Objectivism became cast in stone. All knowledge of this philosophy came from Ayn Rand, end of story.
Basically, her philosophy advocates that man should abide by certain thoughts and actions to live a proper life. The basic principles of objectivism are objective reality (facts are facts), reason (man’s only means of obtaining knowledge), self-interest (happiness as the highest moral pursuit), and pure capitalism. In a nutshell, you owe it to yourself to be happy.
Where Ayn Rand Came From and How She Lived
The thoughts of Ayn Rand cannot be separated from who she is and how she developed as a person. According to Wikipedia:
Rand was born in 1905 into a middle-class family of non-observant Jews in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her father was a chemist and became a successful pharmacist who eventually owned his own pharmacy and the building in which it was located.
Rand was only twelve when the Russian revolution arrived in 1917. When she grew up, she was opposed to the Tsar. Her family life was troubled by the rise of the Bolshevik party, and her father’s pharmacy ended up being confiscated by the Soviets. Her family fled to the Crimea (initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War), and there, her family started a new life.
Ayn Rand determined that she was an atheist while she was in high school, and she graduated from high school in the Crimea. She held there for a short period a job teaching Red Army soldiers to read, and she enjoyed the work very much. During her work, she observed that the illiterate soldiers were eager to learn and respectful of her.
At sixteen, Rand returned with her family to Saint Petersburg. She enrolled at Petrograd State University, where she studied in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle and Plato, and she studied heavily the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Her formal study of philosophy amounted to only a few courses. Along with other non-Communist students, Rand was purged from the university shortly before graduating. However, after complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, some of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate, which Rand did in October 1924. She subsequently studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad.
In the fall of 1925, she was granted a visa to visit American relatives. She left Russia on January 17, 1926, and arrived in the United States on February 19, entering by ship through New York City. After a brief stay with her relatives in Chicago, she resolved never to return to the Soviet Union.
What’s So Wrong with Objectivism?
Now, what’s wrong with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism? Well, essentially everything. Firstly, Objectivism’s claims are simply asserted as self-evident philosophical truths. Without any evidence, assertions are meaningless. Christopher Hitchens said it more elegantly – “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
The premise of Objectivism’s claims seems to be reasonable but after following their reasoning, assumptions start to begin. And these assumptions are embraced as unquestionable truths which then lead to erroneous conclusions. To make things short, the philosophy derived human nature from a small set of axioms.
To demonstrate, let us look at its most basic tenet, its so-called “axiom of existence”, which states that “existence exists”. If you think about it, you’ll realize that it is flat out wrong. Try that statement to different words – “abstinence abstains, difference differs, excellence excels, obedience obeys, persistence persists, life lives, etc…“. Do any of these statements make sense? Of course not. That is to say, you exist, I exist, the universe exists— but existence doesn’t exist. This is because as even Rand herself admits in her writings, only concretes exist. And existence is clearly not a concrete, because you cannot ascribe any specific characteristics to it. Existence, out of context means nothing, and hence, to say out of any specific context that “existence” exists is to effectively say that nothing exists. Every other philosopher has realized that the assumption is not only meaningless but outright false (What’s terribly wrong with Objectivism?). It’s ironic that Rand is also famous for saying the words — “Check your premises…”
Another fundamental tenet of Objectivism is the axiom of identity: “A is A”. As it is, that statement is incapable of explaining anything. This axiom of identity seems to be the first indication of Objectivists’ overuse of deductive reasoning. The law of identity was used to assume that there are some truths that are absolute. Objectivism’s truth claims seem to be entirely built around this idea. It starts with a few axioms, and from these axioms, everything else is derived – gender roles, the right kind of music, capitalism as right form of economic system, selfishness as a virtue, and so on. From the premise “A is A”, everything else follows. There’s a Ayn Rand quote to that effect:
“I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.“
Another apparent big mistake of Objectivism is that every idea can be derived from deductive reasoning, wherein all its conclusions leave no room for errors, which is simply false. The vast majority of other knowledge requires inductive reasoning which involves reasoning from a set of specific facts to arrive at general conclusions.
What is it about Rand’s philosophy as presented in her novels that engendered it to have a cult following? Well, some of her ideas are very powerful and appealing – individualism, excellence in one’s own work, personal responsibility, etc. Both of her novels have protagonists that were always rational, productive, and individualistic; all the other characters where irrational, second-raters, and always dependent on the productiveness of the main characters. All the decisions that the characters had to decide were either always absolutely right or absolutely wrong. Followers of Objectivism never seem to realize that real people aren’t characters, that there are other factors that affect human nature which simply cannot be deduced from a small set of axioms. (My Country ‘Tis of ME–The United States of Ayn Rand)
Objectivist Morality and the Virtue of Selfishness
In terms of morality, what would seem to be one big flaw in Rand’s philosophy is the belief that morals can have an absolute standard of criteria, which is simply not scientifically supportable. Morals don’t exist in nature and so, it cannot be discovered (The Science of Good and Evil. Shermer, M. 2004 ).
Morality is subject to culture and human experience and it is constantly evolving. A few centuries ago, slavery was widely accepted but it is now generally abhorred. Different social groups and different time periods have claims on what is regarded as morally right or wrong. And this phenomenon alone tells us that morality is not absolute. When a social group claims to know the absolute right and wrong, you now have a group that is very similar to religion or ideology that is intolerant of differing ideas. This absolutism and intolerance, I think, could be the biggest flaw of Objectivism. The historical decline of Objectivism confirms this observation.
The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness, which tells a man to be concerned with one’s owns interests. It considers altruism as evil because it permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man – a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others (Virtue of Selfishness, 1965). The 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, where 38 of her neighbors did not intervene while she was being raped and murdered for about half an hour, perfectly demonstrates how an Objectivist would act improperly. If one would follow John Galt’s oath (Atlas Shrugged, 1957), he would certainly not sacrifice his life for Ms. Genovese. This act of nonintervention for selfish reasons is clearly appalling and self-defeating for any self-respecting individual. (The Vice of Selfishness)
Why Most Objectivists are Hostile
You would notice that whenever you encounter an Objectivist, they would always seem to start with questions followed by countless moralizing and condemnation. Such behavior is personally supported and advocated by Aynd Rand herself, Leonard Peikoff, and many of their followers. Most often, Objectivists that you will encounter online could just be Ayn Rand copycats. (The term – ‘Randroid’, a blending of ‘Rand’ and ‘android’ – has been used to evoke the image of “the John Galt-imitating robots produced by the cult). They start with questions and then they will insist on attacking your honesty, integrity, and character. This is the approach how Ayn Rand argued with her critics. When you are familiar with her essays and interviews, you will notice that those of the Objectivists just follow her technique, the same way religious fanatics follow their leader.
Why is this so? This is because the Objectivist ethics (The Objectivist Ethics. Rand, A. 1961) have extensive claims about concepts in human psychology that can never be proved or defended (The Peikovian Doctrine of the Arbitrary Assertion, 2008). These claims are simply assumed to be true. Again, no evidence to back up these claims, just assumed to be true. And these claims fall into three main categories: Inherently Dishonest Ideas, Evil, and Evasion.
These psychological concepts of ‘evil,’ ‘evasion,’ and ‘inherently dishonest ideas’ do not belong to philosophy. Objectivists appear to use these concepts to morally condemn other people without restriction. As a result, the Objectivist movement has remained a tiny group for the past forty years, and has hardly been ever taken seriously in the academic world. And since most Objectivists appear to be honestly convinced that an intellectual opponent is holding an inherently dishonest idea, they end up insulting them.
They have a technique called ‘guessing‘, which Objectivists appear to use to determine if an opponent is holding an inherently dishonest idea. They seem to use this technique to declare someone to be evil and dishonest. And this is most probably why most Objectivists often start their statements with questions. Doesn’t that sound too familiar? How many times have you encountered “What is…?”-type of questions from Objectivists? Well, now you know why. Always keep in mind, they appear to be mostly Ayn Rand copycats.
To most Objectivists, they regard morality based solely on the ethical principles that people conform to without identifying the people’s actual motivations. They seem to judge other people’s morals on the basis of whether they conform to Objectivist ethical principles or not. If your morality does not conform to their principles, it appears that you can be judged by them as dishonest and evil. And hence, it permits them to morally condemn you or other people.
Other philosophy forums seem to have the same problem with Objectivists. One person noted that –”
Objectivists preach their newfound brilliance for a few months in other philosophy forums. After some time, the reasonable ones learn from other people that dissect and expose their faulty logic. The unreasonable ones become delusional and get banned or become ignored by everyone.”
Conclusions
The foregoing discussion showed that Objectivism is a radical belief system without evidential foundation and filled with contradictions. The most evident of these contradictions is that Objectivism, although it would seem to motivate individualism and embolden critical thinking, actually turns into a dogmatic belief system that cannot be questioned nor scrutinized.
John Galt or Howard Roark, her two famous protagonists in Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, would have never joined the Objectivist movement. There was no individualism in Rand’s inner circle. Any follower must have the same musical taste, philosophical views, ethical principles, etc. For a philosophy that claimed to be the only and best way to achieve personal happiness, it seems to be a contradiction that Ayn Rand lived a lonely, isolated life in her later years. Her followers worshipped her like a cult figurehead, which she also accepted, despite her rejection of all things religious. Her Objectivism became more than a philosophy but a religion if not a simple cult (Walker, J. The Ayn Rand Cult. 1999). The philosophy of Objectivism appears to be very dogmatic in practice and prone to different interpretations as demonstrated by the successive schisms that plagued the Objectivist movement. Several of the splits were not caused by personal or political differences, but fundamental and philosophical. Moreover, Rand’s followers treated her like a cult figurehead or Supreme Ruler. To her, there were only absolutes, be it on what was good art, music, gender roles, or views of the world (Branden, N. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand. 1989). She believed that it was more important to adhere to a principle than to live up to the expectations of society. (My Country ‘Tis of ME–The United States of Ayn Rand)
Objectivism can be compared to any other cult or religion; its equivalent holy book is Atlas Shrugged. And similar to any fundamentalist religious group, everything Objectivists proclaim is but an interpretation of their holy book. That’s all there is since it is just pure philosophy (and so it is safe to call it a belief system). It has no evidence to support its claims, and appropriately, it is not science. It used pure deductive reasoning to make a derivation of human nature without any evidential foundation and without science to test its claims. Rand herself acknowledged that she did not work out a philosophy of science (Rand, A., Binswanger, H., Peikoff, L. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 1990. pp. 303–304). Clearly, there are good reasons why Objectivism is not a real philosophy.
Ayn Rand, who left Russia, never returned to it, and stayed in the U.S., indeed endeavored to repudiate the overly extreme altruism of collectivist communism. Her theory of Objectivism correctly points out the flaws of inefficiency and ultimate self-destruction inherent in the Russian system. But, the pure self-interest embodied in her novel Atlas Shrugged is a dangerous overreaction that both involves intuitively wrong actions and creates an untenably dangerous social situation. Clearly, selfishness is no real virtue and Objectivism is no real theory. (The Vice of Selfishness)
What makes science light years away from all other disciplines is its commitment to the tentative nature of all its conclusions. Shermer explained science in his book, Why People Believe Believe in Weird Things, in a very simple and elegant way — In science, there are no final answers, only varying degrees of probability. Even scientific “facts” are just conclusions confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement, but that acceptance is never final. Science is not the declaration of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. And that is at the center of its limitations and is also its greatest strength. Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding our world, and we should love and use it.
Sources:
- Atlas Shrugged. Rand, A. 1957.
- The Fountainhead. Rand, A. 1943.
- The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand, A. 1965.
- The Objectivist Ethics. Rand, A. 1961.
- Why People Believe Believe in Weird Things – Psuedoscience, Superstition, and other Confusions of our time. Shermer, M. 1997.
- Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand. Branden, Nathaniel. 1989.
- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Rand, A., Binswanger, H., Peikoff, L., 1990.
- Aristotle’s Law of Identity – http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Identity.html
- The Ayn Rand Cult. Walker, Jeff. 1999.
- The Peikovian Doctrine of the Arbitrary Assertion. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Campbell, Robert L. 2008.
- Ayn Rand and the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology. Campbell, Robert L. 1999. http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/randcogrev.html
- Is Objectivism A Religion?. Ellis, Albert. 1968.
- http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/rand.php
- http://www.barbarabranden.com/answer-nathaniel.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peikoff
- http://www.la-articles.org.uk/alice.htm
- http://www.aynrand.org/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivist_movement
- Morality-Evolutionary Perspectives – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Evolutionary_perspectives
- Transcendent Morality. Shermer, Michael. The Science of Good and Evil. ISBN 0805075208. 2004
- http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/wrong.html
- Forty Year Decline of Objectivism: 1967-2007 – http://www.solopassion.com/node/2600
- Public reaction to Kitty Genovese’s murder – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese#Public_reaction
- Bystander effect – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
- Ayn Rand on Feminism – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpzDdTrw5II
- http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2008/09/whats-with-objectivism.html
- The Vice of Selfishness: A critique of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism
- Anti Rand: A Critique of pure Sophistry
- My Country ‘Tis of ME–The United States of Ayn Rand
- Critique of Objectivist Ethics by Michael Huemer
- Criticisms of Objectivism (or Ayn Rand) by Mike Huben
- The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand: A Personal Statement by Nathaniel Branden
- The Faulty Reasoning of Ayn Rand Types
- What’s Wrong with Ayn Rand?
Additional Resources (If you’re still not convinced):
- Leonard Peikoff Interview – Defend Objectivism all you want. But how can anyone possibly defend the head of the Ayn Rand Institute with his statements? Watch this for insanity in action.
- Ayn Rand Institute Press Release (Dec 2004) – US Should Not Help Tsunami Victims. Do not give cash. Do not send help.
- Alan Greenspan, of Federal US Reserve, making his views on laissez faire capitalism clear–he does NOT support it.
no wonder why the author abhors ayn rand’s philosophy. he’s a collectivist. he doesn’t base his moral judgment on his own reason, but instead rely it on moral standards set by CULTURE and SOCIETY. that means that he doesn’t evaluate a practice whether it’s morally good or evil. take for example his say on SLAVERY.
“Morality is subject to culture and human experience and it is constantly evolving. A few centuries ago, slavery was widely accepted but it is now generally abhorred.”
isn’t an individual supposed to establish his own morality from his own experiences and reasoning? morality, as far as i’m concerned, doesn’t depend on culture or society. if that’s the case, then the individual is irrational for accepting a code/practice/mentality dictated by a collective group without assessing its validity. … See more
objectivism simply claims that if people were rational, absolute morality is possible.
next. the author’s counter-reaction on ayn rand’s view on sacrifice and self-interest utterly lacks understanding. he has given a concrete example as to why rational-selfishness is “apalling”
“The 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, where 38 of her neighbors did not intervene while she was being raped and murdered for about half an hour, perfectly demonstrates how an Objectivist would act improperly.”
to begin with, ayn rand explained a hundred times (in her essays and in her interviews) that helping other people is not bad so long as we don’t make it a moral duty and as long as we don’t put ourselves in danger. it would be morally evil for an individual to save a stranger from his burning house knowing that his life would be in danger on the process. this is SELF-SACRIFICE and is morally wrong. ayn further claims that putting other people (especially a stranger) is morally wrong. however, if an individual saves a person who he loves, then this is not SACRIFICE but integrity.It’s just a matter of putting things into HIERARCHY. never sacrifice something or someone of a higher value to something/something of a lower value or a non-value.
another thing… was he honest in claiming that he read ayn rand’s books including her essays? in ayn rand’s essay entitled “The Ethics of Emergencies”, she explained that anyone witness another person struggling against a catastrophic phenomenon (sinking ship, storm, drowning in water) should do all means to save him provided he’s not going to endanger his life. it is but proper to save a dying man from any emergencies for him to continue his life. however, after that catastrophic event, it’s no longer a duty of anyone to help him with his struggles all throughout his life.
this is just for now. i will continue this next time.. pardon the the typos if there are any. i’m too lazy for proofreading.
i suggest that before reading articles debunking objectivism, one must read and fully comprehend ayn rand’s essays and novels first.
This was fun. I am missing a lot.
…Just reposting the response I wrote to the recent articles:
——————————————————-
Okay people, I really want to settle this issue once and for all. First of all, my apologies for not having the time to read all your comments. I already added the disclaimer to my blog post. My ONLY reason for writing that post on Objectivism is because I observed that a significant number of people in this community seem to be putting too much attention to personal attacks from a blog that promotes Objectivism; without a true understanding of the belief system. The Facebook page, forum discussions seem to be filled with reactions to statements by a group (probably just one) promoting Objectivism. I decided to support this community because I think that it is very important that a group that promotes science and reason need to exist in a very theocratic country…It really disappoints me that this group's attention seem to be diverted to fending off insults and condemnation from a blog that promotes Objectivism. Objectivism is just a tiny insignificant movement that's not even recognized by anyone in the academic world. Objectivism is not a real philosophy and Ayn Rand is not considered by many as a real philosopher.
If anyone of you have carefully read my blog post and compared it to the source of this plagiarism complaint, you would immediately notice that he wrote it in such a way that the plagiarism was intentional. And if anyone would read his other posts, it seems very obvious that he has a personal grudge against me just for exposing the faulty logic of Objectivism. (Just look at the insults and efforts he made, not to mention his repetitive mention of my full name that appears to be a desperate attempt to discredit me). My blog post on Objectivism is roughly a 3,000-word essay and I only wrote it in my free time. It is a very tedious process to write a piece of this length about a subject that is so broad…which just became recently familiar to me. I just missed adding some of the links and properly revising text portions of my post; it was an honest mistake, and unintentional. If you still have doubts, just check the links I cited as sources and compare the ratio.
If you want to talk about intellectual honesty, that's perfectly fine. To begin with, I always used my real name and NOT hide under multiple online profiles. My blog post never insulted or morally condemned anyone personally, but a great number of the comments I received were insults and condemnation (mostly from Objectivists). And yet most people seem to immediately give merit to the source of this plagiarism complaint; never mind the malicious intention and personal attacks; never mind that the ideas, tactics, and words he used were just imitation of Ayn Rand's; never mind that he posts malicious statements in the online pages of this group under several different names, and so on…
Just to end this issue, I have already added the disclaimer in my blog post and revised portions of the text. I encourage anyone who has the time and passion to edit it if there are still errors, factual inaccuracies, missing links, unrevised content that would be still considered as plagiarized, etc. If that is still not enough, then please feel free to take it down. It's perfectly fine with me. If there is someone who has the time to write and replace it with a better one, that would be cool. I only wrote it because I can't find a comprehensive article about Objectivism that would help other people in this community understand the reason behind the personal attacks and insults when arguing with Objectivists.
In my opinion, the best way to stop the discussions and petty issues from Objectivists is to completely ignore them. By responding to their personal attacks, it just gives them more online 'street' credibility (if there is such a word). I'm all for being open but not too open that people with malicious motives are still allowed to post links and statements in the online pages of this community; and I think it's very easy to identify them.
Search engines analyze links and keyword phrases to determine the ranking of search results. Hence, if you would respond to his attacks, you are just making his insults and negative comments about you have a higher page ranking. To demonstrate, I checked some of the names who responded to the personal insults of this guy, and his blog is one of the top results in Google search. So please don't respond or counterattack; just move on to the bigger issues – religion, overpopulation, corruption, declining education, Vatican scandal, etc…
Just to reassure the people who are sincere in writing for this community, my sincere apologies to all of you. I did not intend to demean your effort/contributions to this group, in fact, I enjoy reading your articles; and please continue contributing. My blog post was just a response to the increasing attention placed on Objectivism, and nothing more than that.
I hope this response will finally settle this issue once and for all. And honestly, I really don't have the time and effort to pursue this any further.
Peace.
One of the (i mean I think he’s alone) propagators of this wrong philosophy called Objectivism by the teachings of Ayn Rand Mr. Vincenton post is not my number 1 fan I mean he is the alien thinking enemy in my book though this time I might as well say that I am agreeing with him that that the author Karlo Espiritu have plagiarized and not only plagiarized he might not even know how to think at all.
The first premise this is what he said
“To begin with, I found out that Objectivism is just pure philosophy, it’s not science”
This is the worst statement I have ever encountered and he copied it from some source without even thinking
This is how freedictionary defined philosophy
1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
3. A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume.
4. The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
5. The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
6. The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
7. A set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity; an underlying theory: an original philosophy of advertising.
8. A system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy of life.
And here I might add together with the definition above as
Philosophy is the highest for of Science
There is no such thing as “pure philosophy” and not a science this is outrageous from the stand point of philosophy.
let me give another example for Mr. Karlo Espiritu to ponder
How can you define the nature of an atom if you don’t use Philosophy?
I might have objections to this Vincenton Post and his Objectivist stance but please Mr Karlo let me give you 2 advise
1. If you want to quote someone give them credit.
2. Before you quote think, or even if you philosophize be sure you know what you are doing. For there are many here are not please either by plagiarism or wrong reasoning
Sorry for the mistake it should have read
Philosophy is the highest form of Science
So it's real! lol! wala pala kayo! puro na lang kopya, kopya, kopya! di na lang nahiya! hahaha!
Я бы с такими в кроватке поболел .
"The bible of Right-wing losers"
Hahaha! I love Lisa Simpson!
Although I don't like her involvement in the tree-hugging hippies group PETA.
(Off-topic) 🙂
Even Lisa Simpson recognized what's wrong with Objectivism…and she summarized it in a smart way…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZmVRI8Ptv4
"This is because as even Rand herself admits in her writings, only concretes exist. And existence is clearly not a concrete, because you cannot ascribe any properties to it. "
why cant you ascribe properties to it?
do we not always ascribe properties to ideas all the time?
You can refer to Aristotle's Law of Identity. I added a link to the sentence you just quoted. Thanks for pointing that out, I forgot to add my reference for that.
But just to expand on the idea, let's take a different word –"life". "Existence" doesn't exist anymore than "life" lives. You live, I live, dogs live, but life doesn't. Why doesn't? For the simple reason that LIFE is a creation of the human mind, and exists only in the human mind. To be precise, what Aristotle called a topic (the Greek word having been topos, which literally means place). Thus in the sense meant here, a topos or a topic is a place in which we humans might put things we wish to categorize as "living." Therefore, the particular things, (birds, trees, kids, priests, and so on) which we put into the topos or place we call "life" are all living, that place itself, in which we put them, is not. That is to say, again, living things live, but life does not.
The same can be said about existence. Living things, and inanimate things now as well, exist. We prove this by pointing to them, and describing their properties (e.g., This wine is red, That priest is a pedophile ). But we can do no such thing with existence because existence has no properties. It has no properties because it has no existence of its own, save as a topic or topos or place in human discourse. That is to say, existence most definitely does not exist. What is more, Aristotle never said it did or any other philosopher in history. Existence is not a concrete, because you can't ascribe any specific characteristics to it. It's a merely a kind of floating abstraction – a topos or topic or place – that outside of a specific context, quite literally means nothing. Thus, "existence" out of context means nothing.
in that same link, there is another link for existence exists.
there it says that existence is not a tautology, but an axiom.
"Existence exists is an axiom which states that there is something, as opposed to nothing. At the core of every thought is the observation that "I am aware of something". The very fact that one is aware of something is the proof that something in some form exists — that existence exists — existence being all that which exists. Also, to grasp the thought, "I am aware of something," you must be conscious. Existence is axiomatic because it is necessary for all knowledge and it cannot be denied without conceding its truth. To deny existence is to say that something doesn't exist. A denial of something is only possible if existence exists."
Yes, "Existence exists" is an axiom, but "A is A" is a tautology. I refined the paragraph of my essay regarding this matter. Try that axiomatic statement to different ideas – “abstinence abstains, difference differs, excellence excels, obedience obeys, persistence persists, life lives, etc…“. Do any of these statements make sense? Of course not.
You also seem to have ignored the second paragraph after the one you just quoted:
"To exist, an existent (an entity that exists) must have a particular identity. A thing cannot exist without existing as something, otherwise it would be nothing and it would not exist. In the statement "something exists", the something refers to the axiom of identity and the exists refers to the axiom of existence. They cannot be separated and are like two sides of the same coin or two ways of understanding the same axiom."
Regardless, you can't possibly deduce human nature from just a set of axioms. As I pointed out in the essay, one big flaw of Objectivism is its overuse of deductive reasoning. Science simply does not work that way.
You can refer to the comments of @Pecier on deductive and inductive reasoning. He explained it quite elegantly.
but "A is A" is just (from the website) the notion that things that exist have a nature.
"Everything that exists has a specific nature. Each entity exists as something in particular and it has characteristics that are a part of what it is. "This leaf is red, solid, dry, rough, and flammable." "This book is white, and has 312 pages." "This coin is round, dense, smooth, and has a picture on it." In all three of these cases we are referring to an entity with a specific identity; the particular type of identity, or the trait discussed, is not important. Their identities include all of their features, not just those mentioned."
note, its not " a leaf is a leaf". the point of axiom of identity ("A is A") is that leaves have characteristics, characteristics too mundane to list here.
ideas, such as existence, have characteristics too, right?
however, i'm not sure that IDEAS can be subject to "A is A" that same way that physical objects can. the website didnt use any examples.
but i think plato did believe that ideas have characteristics — an identity– and can be described by "A is A".
Look, let’s not go into the tiniest and most obscure details. I honestly don’t have extensive knowledge in philosophy or morality; and if you have noticed, we are just arguing with words…that’s it. Axioms tell absolutely nothing about anything actually existent.
The whole point of that paragraph(which is why I kept it short), is the Objectivism’s mistake in using pure deductive reasoning to derive human nature. The truth of the matter is you ONLY use axioms to explain abstract ideas. But you use science, evidence, and inductive reasoning to explain human nature and the real world.
Yes, it is true that Ayn Rand is the one who stated that “Existence exist”. It is the same idea to that of Aristotle, “A is A”. It is only to the lack of understanding to say that it is false and illogical.
What exist is the concrete entity. That is correct. The term “exist”, “existence” are abstraction or mental idea. This thing or issue is being studied in epistemology–the science of knowledge.
If you are to study philosophy you have to take metaphysics, epistemology, ethics,politics and arts. And objectivism is integrated (connected,interlink) to that whole study. And it takes time to learn and study objectivism and applied it in your own individual life and as well as to the society as a whole.
It cannot be considered a cult or religion because it does not recruit any followers. If you understand and accept the philosophy and applied it to yourself then you can declare or not to be an objectivist. No one and even the originator did not aspire and recruit for any followers. No one compelled me to read and study that philosophy. I do it myself and then discovered what’s in it.
Objectivism is an IDEA. It is a very influencial and controversial idea. Why? That is the question you have to answer to your own self.
Hey Alejandro Give me 1M pesos. I'm gonna put it to good use the Proof is just There! Thanks. Oh and can I borrow the deed of your house? Short lang, just need to look at the fine details. don't worry I won't do anything bad with it. You can trust me, there is no Proof that says you shouldn't.
Check your premises. Aristotle did NOT have the same idea; the truth of the matter is that Aristotle never said anything like that. "A is A" is a tautology, not an axiom.
All the other philosophers in history never claimed anything like that. And such statements told you absolutely nothing about anything actually existent — whether a given thing (e.g., Fairies or Unicorns) did or did not exist, or about any sort of objective reality, the assertion is not only meaningless but ridiculous.
Your claim about Objectivism not being a cult is simply false. That's just your opinion. Read again the essay, and verify the evidences and sources I cited. How can you possibly deny that Objectivism is not a religion/cult despite all the evidences?
Nathaniel Branden, the closest student and lover of Ayn Rand, addressed it in his memoir – "We were not a cult in the literal, dictionary sense of the word, but certainly there was a cultish aspect to our world. We were a group organized around a powerful and charismatic leader, whose members judged one another's character chiefly by loyalty to that leader and to her ideas" (Branden, N. 1989. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand, p. 256).
In his highly critical 1999 book The Ayn Rand Cult, Jeff Walker notes the following similarities between Ayn Rand's Objectivism and L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics:
-both claim to be science and logic based
-both treat the brain as a machine
-both present a higher mind reprogramming the rest of humanity
-both recommended the uprooting of irrational premises (engrams)
-both assume that rationality permit people to enjoy healthy emotional lives
-both relate immorality to decreased potential for survival
-both perceive striving for goals as the important motivator in life
-both oppose coercion, even by government
-both assume that rational people have no real conflicts of interest
-both attach mail-in cards in their books to connect readers to the apparatus of movement recruitment
"Existence exists" is not the same as "A is A". If you want "A is A", then it has to be "existence is existence", not "existence exists". The two are very, very different. The former is a tautology, the latter is a strong knowledge claim that is yet to be proved.
If anybody is looking for the evidence of objectivism the answer is REALITY. And this reality is to be discovered and studied by reason (man’s tool of knowing) with the method of logic. Man is one of the reality we can find.
We have to admit and accept that REALITY is absolute; no one can go again reality, no one can rewrite reality and no one can change it. A is A. It cannot be a non-A at the same time. A white cannot be black at the same time. If objectivism is based on reality, then who can be against reality?
Reality is Proof! Whoah, So its been staring at me all along. Hey can you see the same proof over there? I see an interesting piece of proof here but its not exactly saying anything about objectivism. Its telling me that martians like pancakes and that size 7 shoes will give you LBM after walking in them.
Its great that you never have to bring Proof Around. I'm sure Accountants would find that so usefull, they can just tell their Clients: ITs all BALANCED here the Proof is you Looking at it!
Man… maybe I should be an accountant. Its so easy pala. You guys are awesome.
I like living in the world where I never have to defend my whims and points of views. That I can believe what ever I want because the Proof is really just out there and I never have to assemble it for anyone.
Rand is making the world more Awesome every moment!
You simply restated Ayn Rand's words. I thought a fundamental principle of Objectivism is individualism. Basically, what you're saying is — "This is my interpretation of what Ayn Rand said, so you have to believe it". It's essentially equivalent to what religious people are saying — "This is what my Bible says, so you have to believe it". Sorry, but that is simply not a valid counterargument. You just ignored ALL the overwhelming evidences against Objectivism in my essay.
people people people, peace lang tayo 🙂 Let's not call each other names. Alam niyo naman kung gaano kasakit matawag ng di kanais nais na mga pangalan. Of all people, we atheists should know how to be called anti-social hoodlums and devils.
Article was good, just that I didn't agree with some of your statements. Especially one of last ones, "Ayn Rand lived a lonely, isolated life which is a contradiction for one who claimed her way was the best and only way to personal happiness." You can't make this assertion. Other people testifying that Ayn Rand wasn't happy doesn't prove that Ayn Rand was indeed unhappy. More than anything, I think she lived her own life, so regardless of her being happy or unhappy about it, it was up to her to live it.
And siguro isang question lang though to the peeps, especially with this Philosophy vs. Science going on, does science make philosophy irrelevant? In my opinion as of today, maybe never. Though we can determine "joy" scientifically by measuring bodily fluids, we still can't determine "happiness". If then it cannot be proven scientifically – yet – does it mean that the inquiry and philosophies behind happiness is irrelevant? To SOME pragmatists, maybe, but to most of us, the question is not irrelevant. I tend to think of it as philosophy being on the front lines of the war – positioning itself to make inquiries that are at the forefront of human experience, and science as the great strategist who tries to find out the facts and understands them to be able to create models of probable predictions.
FYI lang, nalaman ko sa mentor ko, talagang sa Philosophy nagsimula ang sciences. Kaya pala PhD ang tawag sa mga bihasa, kasi Doctors of Philosophy. So kahit economics expert ka at nagtapos ng doctorate degree, you're still considered a philosopher.
Anyway, great community. Love FF.
“Does science make philosophy irrelevant?”
“In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible…. Then you could have investigated the history of philosophy for other references to its relationship to the specialized sciences.”
Science and Philosophy go together. Science can tell you how to make a bomb, but it is Philosophy that tells you how and when to use it. Science can tell you how to clone a sheep or what happens when you split an atom; but whether cloning a sheep or splitting an atom is of value to Man’s life, is answered by Philosophy.
“We still can’t determine ‘happiness’.”
To determine happiness, first, you have to define ‘happiness’. Let’s use Rand’s definition, for example.
“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—-a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real.”
As MichaelM explained, there are two fundamental choices–existence or non-existence; and their corollaries–pleasure or pain, success or failure.
Then, we ask questions:
1. Do I want to live or die? Suffer or enjoy? Succeed or fail? What values do I want to keep?
2. Is what I am doing or striving to achieve giving me the answer to #1?
Assuming that you are not a suicidal person or a masochist, then you want to be happy, to succeed, and to keep certain values.
1. If what you’re doing enables you to achieve these values, does not cause your failure, does not give you suffering–it is consistent with what you want–then your only logical response (state of consciousness) is to be ‘happy’ and keep doing it. “Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action.”
2. If what you’re doing causes you suffering, failure and denies you the values you want to keep, then:
2a.If your response is frustration, you change what you’re
doing.
2b.If you somehow enjoy it, then that is a state of
“contradictory joy”. If you go back and “check your
premises”, you’d actually find out that what you wanted
in the first place is to suffer and fail.
3. If what you indeed want is to suffer, fail and die–and what you’re doing brings you suffering, failure and death–then you deserve it.
Do you have positive evidence to back up your claims that nothing is absolute and existence doesn't exist? When you say nothing is absolute and existence doesn't exist, it's as if you're simply admitting, albeit unconsciously, that what you wrote is nothing but a piece of claptrap, that your brain is empty, and that everything, including yourself, is nothing but a speck of illusion.
Existence does not need to exist in order for there to be something rather than nothing. The main error of supposing that “existence exists” is comparable to the error of supposing that “stupidity is stupid” or that “the quality of being an even integer is an even integer”. Existence cannot be attached to universals (the Platonic fallacy), it can only be attached to particulars. Dogs exist, even the concept of ‘dogness’ exists, but ‘dogness’ itself doesn’t. Rand, who was an ardent individualist like myself, should have known better than to attach existence to collective terms.
Prove it…
Pecier Cash is something. Cash doesn't need to exists to buy things then. Maybe you can "purchase" Shares for Lord_atheist for him to accept as PROOF. Maybe one that has a current returns of $24,000 a year on average performance in the last 10 years.
Prove what? The you don't need existence to exist in order for there to be something. Simple.
"Pecier is a human being" = "There exists an 'x' such that 'x' is a human being and 'x' is Pecier"
To be is to be the value of a variable. (That's due to Quine, by the way.) You don't need to suppose that existence exists in order to show that anything at all exists.
*That you don't need existence to exist…
Did you notice that you began with "There exists…" You are identifying existence. You are acknowledging that existences exists. There exists.
"The main error of supposing that “existence exists” is comparable to the error of supposing that “stupidity is stupid." This is illogical.
To say that "nothing is absolute" is itself an absolute.
@lord_atheist, it's not worth it. let them die in their own contradictions and errors.
@Michael K.
What’s your take on my reductio ad absurdum below?
How is “There exists…” equivalent to “Existence exists…”? I think it is you who are illogical.
And you did not explain why the statement you quoted from me is illogical.
You also said, “To say that ‘nothing is absolute’ is itself an absolute.” I agree with this statement; however, it is irrelevant to the point and it does not help your argument. In fact, it simply shows that you are desperate and are out of arguments.
@Michael K.
You said “You are identifying existence. You are acknowledging that existences exists. There exists.”
Identifying existence is not the same as saying it exists. Many abstract concepts can be identified, and yet these things do not exist (for instance non-existence, or redness, or irrationality).
I agree that the concept of existence exists; existence, after all, is an abstract entity that exists in the human mind. However, existence itself does not exist.
To say that “existence exists” is to confuse identifiability and meaningfulness (existence is both identifiable and meaningful) with existence. Such a logical error is no mean error.
If a exists, then attributes can be predicated of a.
Suppose a = Pecier. 'Pecier is human' is true. 'Pecier is a woman' is false. 'Pecier is even' and 'Pecier is a complex number' do not make sense. Now, how does one show the truth of the proposition 'a exists?'. There is a set of attributes that can be predicated of a. Let this set be {A,B,C,D,…}. Therefore, A(a) is true, and the same way with B(a), C(a), D(a) and so on. If an object x is found such that A(x), B(x), C(x), D(x) and so on are true, then x=a and a exists.
Now, suppose a = existence. What attribute can be predicated of a? If there are none, then how can we substantiate the claim 'a exists'? Is a red? Is it rough, salty, odd, integrable, convergent, normalizable or whatever? Is it painful, evil, cheery, hard? Again, what attributes can be predicated of a?
Think of the above as a sort of reductio ad absurdum.
MichaelM,
All these verbose replies. You look like someone who is looking for validations for your beliefs.
Why not get it all over with and just admit the truth to yourself? Just say… "I am a Randroid and I am a raving SOCIOPATH. I also enjoy braised human liver over fava beans with a side of chianti."
Now, that wasnt too hard, was it??
Wow. That’s intellectual.
Actually, he sounded like someone who knew what he was talking about.
Haha. Well said.
Please refer to @justinaquino’s response.
You can defend Ayn Rand all you want, and just take a handful of tiny details you disagree with in my essay. Anybody can do that. But it’s not enough to disagree on some points and just refer to the words of Ayn Rand or her followers. You got to have positive evidence to back up your claims to nullify the points of my essay (Absolutism, Intolerance, Overuse of Deductive Reasoning, the statements made by Ayn Rand Institute, implications of Selfishness as a virtue, Unfalsifiable assumptions, no science behind its claims, etc.. ). I showed data and cited my sources to support every argument I presented. And everything is publicly verifiable.
Now, you can scrutinize a few handful details I did not provide much explanation, but can Objectivism convincingly refute ALL the other facts and historical evidence against it? Your arguments are meaningless unless it can also account for ALL the other facts currently explained by the sources I indicated. That is simply how science works.
When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he used examples of real people and real historical events to support his arguments. The characters in Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are just fiction. It seems that most Objectivists never realized that real people are not characters — their ideas about human beings are more caricatures than real-life understandings about how real-life people work.
If Objectivism is the best and only way to personal happiness as Ayn Rand had claimed, then it should have compelling positive evidences to support it. And if that’s the case, no amount of scrutiny or questioning can invalidate its claims.
https://filipinofreethinkers.org/2010/03/27/whats-…
——————————-
Karlo,
So much or your post misrepresents Rand and Objectivism…
1) I have already addressed (Mar 27 10:44) the issue of its status as a philosophy and the difference between the philosophical sciences that define the abstract principles of man's nature and relationship to the rest of existence vs. the particular sciences that define the nature of specific concrete entities and their relationships with man and each other.
2) At the same time in my previous comment I explained the axiomatic nature of the concept of "existence".
3) Similarly with identity — and consciousness too — they are also axiomatic, because one cannot grasp existence as self evident — "something exists", essentially — without implicitly acknowledging that a consciousness (yours) exists that is aware (conscious) not only of some external existents, but also of the fact that that of which one is conscious is a distinct entity from oneself, i.e. that each has a distinctly identifiable nature. One implicitly grasps and acknowledges to oneself that those existence of which one is conscious (A) are what they are (A) and your conscious self (B) is what you are (B), and that these relationships are not interchangeable: A is A, A cannot be A and B at the same time in the same way … etc. etc.
4) I have explained the error of implying or insinuating that Objectivism is a religion or a cult in my reply to Michael Bartolo Mar 28 5:19). Neither is possible.
5) In my comment (Mar 28 6:40) to you re the derivation of Capitalism from the ethical mandate that man must be free to apply his own reason to his own efforts in the service of his own life, I explained how a code of values is necessitated by any man's most fundamental choice of life as a preferable goal over death.
Morals then are an intellectual tool necessitated by the nature of a volitional, rational being such as ourselves. One fact about our nature is that formulating a code of values to assist in choosing the actions that will benefit one's life in the long run is an often slow, tedious, deliberative process. But our daily lives are a never ending series of spontaneous actions that must be chosen from alternative options. That necessitates a code of values — principles that identify abstractly what kinds of concrete actions will contribute to the length and quality of our lives, and which ones will in the long run detract.
We embed the values that we mostly adopt through trial and error or from authoritarian sources in our lives or through conscious deliberation and validation into the framework of our mind. It is the role of our psychology — our emotions — to spontaneously convert our values into complying actions and to return feedback to our self awareness as they successfully do or unsuccessfully do not.
When we bump into apparent psychologically sub-conscious and/or intellectually conscious contradictions, within the system we have assembled in life, the only way to cure them is to dig down into our underlying moral premises and find a more fundamental contradiction we are sustaining, then to reconstruct the logical chain back to the original problem.
Note here that morals do indeed exist, but they are not the concretes you want them to be. They are relationships among concretes. That is to say that they are existents, but nor entities.
I refer you to "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", another book you should have read before attacking. On page 18, Rand explains:
"The first concepts man forms are concepts of entities—since entities are the only primary existents. (Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of entities; motions are motions of entities; relationships are relationships among entities.)"
Since morals are those values that if properly and consistently exercised will, by definition, contribute to a human life, and since the facts of the fundamental nature of human beings (that we live by volitional use of a faculty of reason) are independent of us and our consciousness — are absolute — then, there can be only one set of moral values IN PRINCIPLE that is consistent with our HUMAN NATURE.
6) It is ironic that your slanderous accusation about Objectivists in claiming omniscience regarding what their actions in the Kitty Genovese incident is followed by a claim that Objectivists are Hostile. Personally, I have never encountered an Objectivist as hostile as you are. On the other hand I would never condemn hostility if it is aimed at evil, coercion, or lies.
Therefore, the appropriate, disciplined approach to a critique of the ideas of others is to deal strictly with the facts and refrain from having opinions that are derived from emotions. Rand and Peikoff are intellectually hostile to human sacrifice in all of its instances. You apparently nurture a few instances in which you would condone it — not with a machete on an altar, but certainly with the will of a majority authorizing governmental force, or a moral code that demands it.
In this instance, you seem to be certain that those passersby should have endangered their lives by running to her rescue. A phone call is obvious, and I will condemn them for not doing that too. But you may not establish her need as a claim against their lives without forfeiting your own absolute right to your own life.
7) "The concepts of ‘evil,’ ‘evasion,’ and ‘inherently dishonest ideas’ are psychological concepts that do not belong in philosophy."
Evil is an ethical concept. Ethics is a branch of philosophy.
Dishonest ideas and evasion are concepts pertaining to epistemology and ethics, both of which are branches of philosophy.
8) You said: "The power of moral judgment is very powerful. The power to pronounce someone as an evil evader is the greatest power of all. By making such power available, subject only to impulse, with no objective facts or principles to restrain it, Ayn Rand has unleashed a reign of intellectual terrorism. She has transformed many honest, well-meaning individuals into unjust dogmatic moralizers."
I say, that's hypocrisy. Your accusations describe your last sentence perfectly. That said, the word "power" in the first sentence is only a metaphor that tries to label moral judgment as undue influence with connotations of force. It has that power only to the one who creates it in their own mind. The only persons who hold moral judgment to be a "power" are altruists who have subjugated their own self-esteem to the will of others. Objectivists concern themselves only with whether a moral judgment is valid or not. Other than that, Rand advises us to "judge — and prepare to be judged!"
A moral judgment by a rational person is nothing more than an assessment of facts. Facts are not "just" or "unjust", they are correct or false. Your last sentence in that paragraph is the very kind of moral judgment you are offering as an unsubstantiated opinion we should accept on the authority of your word. Then you write:
"If your only criterion for pronouncing someone to be evil and dishonest is the conclusion, “He can’t be holding that idea honestly,” then virtually anyone who opposes you can be instantly transformed into a dishonest evader."
The criterion is not the conclusion. The conclusion rests on the criterion you fail to mention, i.e. that the characterization is true or false and is or is not accompanied by evidence.
Facts cannot be insults, and indignation cannot rebut them.
9) I won't comment as much on your conclusions, as a large portion of them are dated false assumptions that have been publicly refuted by facts obvious to everyone. The philosophy is now being taught in a number of American Universities. The sales of Atlas Shrugged have doubled this year to record levels and scores consistently at the top of its best seller category beating even many big name contemporary works on Amazon. A constant stream of blogs devote dozens of posts to Rand and Objectivism every week. Television and radio personalities in the U.S. who would qualify as her intellectual opponents are recommending to their viewers and listeners that they read her works for her ideas on self reliance and politics with which they do agree.
Congrats Karlo for a substantial demolition of Objectivism. Good work.
Geri Villas,
Did you read MichaelM’s comments?
It’s a substantial–and well-informed–demolition of Karlo’s article. You will learn more about Objectivism from his comments than from the article itself. You have to understand Objectivism before you can say it’s been demolished by a single emotional article, don’t you think?
But I won’t suggest you judge the merits of Objectivism based on MichaelM’s comments alone. You have to read Rand’s books, of course, and maybe watch Dr. Yaron Brook’s videos, etc.
Begin with “The Fountainhead” or “For The New Intellectual”.
I'm really surprise people do follow these Philosophies of Selfishness. I'm more surprise that people are defending it. My god!
This is very irrational & immoral! Civilization wouldn't survive if everybody follow these philosophies. I'm glad we don't.
I would rather live in a communist society rather than living in a society following Ayn Rand's philosophies.
Thanks for writing this great article. Now I understand why Randroid Objectivists are not so objective after all. There are no real individuals in a cult – just the leader and her blind followers. Go Free-Farters! 🙂
So its a Philosophy with no Scientific Backing, or way to conclusively
prove what it sets out to do.
Modern Ethics and Economics has experimentation, history and math to prove its current theories and these theories continually evolving and changing as science makes more data available.
Randism has never had science back her claims it just Philiosophy. Its just a non-reality based Philosophy.
Modern economic theories and behavior is backed by Economics, Mathematics-Game-theory, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Ethics, and Psychology.
So its a philosophy, which a bunch of other people can see has dangerous consequences. Since none of the Objectivists had done anything to prove their Ideas Objectively otherwise through economic theorems, human behavioral models, or anything outside argument I guess they the Burdensome Responsibility to address that fault.
Philosophy is all good, but without scientific integrity to back up the claim, it can be as simply ignored. You can take 1 Million words to explain your argument. It would just more expedient if you had the science to back it up.
Even a million pretty statements cannot support an empirical claim, although a single verified, carefully obtained scientific finding is enough.
The main error of Objectivism is that it claims to have deduced reality from mere axioms. To give a more specific instance, consider Rand's theory on the nature of man. When you read Rand you will discover that she is so certain about human nature. But what is her source of certainty?
Let us ask two related questions first. Can a social psychologist be absolutely certain about his much verified theory that societies that suppress the feminine tendency tend to destroy themselves? Can an anthropologist be dogmatic about her theories on how music originated? If the social psychologist and the anthropologist are to justify the title social "scientist", then the answer to both questions must be in the negative.
But Rand apparently deduced human nature from a set of axioms. Now, why are the axioms true? "Well, they're axioms, and you don't prove axioms," the Objectivist would say. "Or, well, they're self evident, and if you don't find them so then you're an evil collectivist!" he might reply. And thus the error of Objectivism and of all Pure Rationalist philosophies (such as Platonism and Cartesianism) is exposed. This error has been repeatedly exposed from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to Russell and the Analytic School, but apparently Rand was not so updated on the current philosophy of her time. She was so high up in her ivory tower of pure rationalist dogmatism that she forgot to catch up on her reading.
Whoah Rand was able to Successfully Deduce human nature to a set of axioms!!! Stop the presses! Get the scientific board of inquiry here! You just took the ENTIRE psychological academes’s job. This is a breakthrough, imagine what it can mean to the human race.
Thanks Pecier.
Do you ever read the comments you reply to critically and carefully, Justin? Because I don't know where to begin pointing out the error of your replies, because you entirely miss the point of my comments.
Well, maybe I can begin with this (and let me type it in all caps, in case you miss the point): IM AM NOT A RANDIAN OBJECTIVIST. Heck, for crying out loud I'm not even an egoist or a rationalist. (I'm using 'rationalism' here in its traditional philosophical sense, the sense in which it is opposed to 'empricism'.)
So please, do read my comments again. Shame on you for bunching people into "Randroids" and "clever people like me who know everything about the world already so we don't need philosophy anymore".
https://filipinofreethinkers.org/2010/03/27/whats-so-wrong-with-objectivism/
——————————-
Karlo,
So much or your post misrepresents Rand and Objectivism…
1) I have already addressed (Mar 27 10:44) the issue of its status as a philosophy and the difference between the philosophical sciences that define the abstract principles of man’s nature and relationship to the rest of existence vs. the particular sciences that define the nature of specific concrete entities and their relationships with man and each other.
2) At the same time in my previous comment I explained the axiomatic nature of the concept of “existence”.
3) Similarly with identity — and consciousness too — they are also axiomatic, because one cannot grasp existence as self evident — “something exists”, essentially — without implicitly acknowledging that a consciousness (yours) exists that is aware (conscious) not only of some external existents, but also of the fact that that of which one is conscious is a distinct entity from oneself, i.e. that each has a distinctly identifiable nature. One implicitly grasps and acknowledges to oneself that those existence of which one is conscious (A) are what they are (A) and your conscious self (B) is what you are (B), and that these relationships are not interchangeable: A is A, A cannot be A and B at the same time in the same way … etc. etc.
4) I have explained the error of implying or insinuating that Objectivism is a religion or a cult in my reply to Michael Bartolo Mar 28 5:19). Neither is possible.
5) In my comment (Mar 28 6:40) to you re the derivation of Capitalism from the ethical mandate that man must be free to apply his own reason to his own efforts in the service of his own life, I explained how a code of values is necessitated by any man’s most fundamental choice of life as a preferable goal over death.
Morals then are an intellectual tool necessitated by the nature of a volitional, rational being such as ourselves. One fact about our nature is that formulating a code of values to assist in choosing the actions that will benefit one’s life in the long run is an often slow, tedious, deliberative process. But our daily lives are a never ending series of spontaneous actions that must be chosen from alternative options. That necessitates a code of values — principles that identify abstractly what kinds of concrete actions will contribute to the length and quality of our lives, and which ones will in the long run detract.
We embed the values that we mostly adopt through trial and error or from authoritarian sources in our lives or through conscious deliberation and validation into the framework of our mind. It is the role of our psychology — our emotions — to spontaneously convert our values into complying actions and to return feedback to our self awareness as they successfully do or unsuccessfully do not.
When we bump into apparent psychologically sub-conscious and/or intellectually conscious contradictions, within the system we have assembled in life, the only way to cure them is to dig down into our underlying moral premises and find a more fundamental contradiction we are sustaining, then to reconstruct the logical chain back to the original problem.
Note here that morals do indeed exist, but they are not the concretes you want them to be. They are relationships among concretes. That is to say that they are existents, but nor entities.
I refer you to “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, another book you should have read before attacking. On page 18, Rand explains:
“The first concepts man forms are concepts of entities—since entities are the only primary existents. (Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of entities; motions are motions of entities; relationships are relationships among entities.)”
Since morals are those values that if properly and consistently exercised will, by definition, contribute to a human life, and since the facts of the fundamental nature of human beings (that we live by volitional use of a faculty of reason) are independent of us and our consciousness — are absolute — then, there can be only one set of moral values IN PRINCIPLE that is consistent with our HUMAN NATURE.
6) It is ironic that your slanderous accusation about Objectivists in claiming omniscience regarding what their actions in the Kitty Genovese incident is followed by a claim that Objectivists are Hostile. Personally, I have never encountered an Objectivist as hostile as you are. On the other hand I would never condemn hostility if it is aimed at evil, coercion, or lies.
Therefore, the appropriate, disciplined approach to a critique of the ideas of others is to deal strictly with the facts and refrain from having opinions that are derived from emotions. Rand and Peikoff are intellectually hostile to human sacrifice in all of its instances. You apparently nurture a few instances in which you would condone it — not with a machete on an altar, but certainly with the will of a majority authorizing governmental force, or a moral code that demands it.
In this instance, you seem to be certain that those passersby should have endangered their lives by running to her rescue. A phone call is obvious, and I will condemn them for not doing that too. But you may not establish her need as a claim against their lives without forfeiting your own absolute right to your own life.
7) “The concepts of ‘evil,’ ‘evasion,’ and ‘inherently dishonest ideas’ are psychological concepts that do not belong in philosophy.”
Evil is an ethical concept. Ethics is a branch of philosophy.
Dishonest ideas and evasion are concepts pertaining to epistemology and ethics, both of which are branches of philosophy.
8) You said: “The power of moral judgment is very powerful. The power to pronounce someone as an evil evader is the greatest power of all. By making such power available, subject only to impulse, with no objective facts or principles to restrain it, Ayn Rand has unleashed a reign of intellectual terrorism. She has transformed many honest, well-meaning individuals into unjust dogmatic moralizers.”
I say, that’s hypocrisy. Your accusations describe your last sentence perfectly. That said, the word “power” in the first sentence is only a metaphor that tries to label moral judgment as undue influence with connotations of force. It has that power only to the one who creates it in their own mind. The only persons who hold moral judgment to be a “power” are altruists who have subjugated their own self-esteem to the will of others. Objectivists concern themselves only with whether a moral judgment is valid or not. Other than that, Rand advises us to “judge — and prepare to be judged!”
A moral judgment by a rational person is nothing more than an assessment of facts. Facts are not “just” or “unjust”, they are correct or false. Your last sentence in that paragraph is the very kind of moral judgment you are offering as an unsubstantiated opinion we should accept on the authority of your word. Then you write:
“If your only criterion for pronouncing someone to be evil and dishonest is the conclusion, “He can’t be holding that idea honestly,” then virtually anyone who opposes you can be instantly transformed into a dishonest evader.”
The criterion is not the conclusion. The conclusion rests on the criterion you fail to mention, i.e. that the characterization is true or false and is or is not accompanied by evidence.
Facts cannot be insults, and indignation cannot rebut them.
9) I won’t comment as much on your conclusions, as a large portion of them are dated false assumptions that have been publicly refuted by facts obvious to everyone. The philosophy is now being taught in a number of American Universities. The sales of Atlas Shrugged have doubled this year to record levels and scores consistently at the top of its best seller category beating even many big name contemporary works on Amazon. A constant stream of blogs devote dozens of posts to Rand and Objectivism every week. Television and radio personalities in the U.S. who would qualify as her intellectual opponents are recommending to their viewers and listeners that they read her works for her ideas on self reliance and politics with which they do agree.
Twilight and Creationism are also quite popular. 😉
"The increase in readership of the novels is not identical to an increase in the number of Objectivists emerging after having read the novels." Forty Year Decline of Objectivism: 1967-2007 (http://www.solopassion.com/node/2600)
I wish they would teach Randian Objectivism in universities. That way, the dogmatism of its adherents will, I believe, be lessened, because to me it is the dogmatism of Objectivists and of Rand herself that is the greatest weakness of the school.
Don’t get me wrong, I admire Ayn Rand. Her followers, however, go beyond admiring her. By golly, they worship her! And while an admirer can criticize (the admirer can even be the greatest critic), a worshiper bows down unquestioningly before authority. I believe that the adherents of Objectivism do Rand and her ideas a great injustice by making a bad religion out of her philosophy.
The same thing happened to Jesus, IIRC
Not really. If you study the Jesus of the Gospels, especially the Jesus of the Gospel according to John, you'll see that he is a nihilist, a nihilist in the sense that he would want to enjoin everybody to give everything up just to attain salvation. If you carefully read the New Testament, you'll quickly discover that's it's not all about love or any of those sweet sounding words, it's all about undermining the earthly social order in order to enter the "Kingdom of Heaven".
UPDATE: Just added a new section on the Objectivist's Morality and the Virtue of Selfishness. I also added some additional resources at the bottom of the article. Check out the interview of Ayn Rand Intitute's head, Leonard Peikoff and see how you can possibly defend his statements.
"…And existence is clearly not a concrete, because you cannot ascribe any properties to it. Existence, out of context means nothing, and hence, to say out of any specific context that “existence” exists is to effectively say that nothing exists…."
After this error on the concept that underpins all others, nothing that follows could be worth reading other than by accident. Existence is not a concrete, because it is a collective noun, like "people" that is also not a concrete per se. Its referent is ALL concrete entities, that are, by definition, concrete.
There is no evidence to prove the axiom existence exists, precisely because it is an axiom stating the axiomatic concept of existence that is, being an axiomatic concept, necessarily self-evident. An axiomatic concept must be self-evident because there cannot be anything more fundamental from which to conclude it. If there were, it would not be axiomatic, the more fundamental item of knowledge would be. As the most fundamental of all axiomatic concepts, one cannot discuss or attempt to refute it without making use of it and implying thereby its validity.
Part of your problem is that your impatience to state profundities about Rand in the negative fooled you into thinking that just two novels and a few essays were all there was to Objectivism. If you would have read more, like "Philosophy: Who Needs It", you would have found that:
"Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man’s relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible."
Then you could have investigated the history of philosophy for other references to its relationship to the specialized sciences. You would find that philosophy is a science that deals with man and the rest of the universe in a DIFFERENT CONTEXT from the special sciences. For instance, with the specialized sciences, you can study the brain from now into the rest of eternity and learn everything there is to know about every molecule and structure of the organ, but you can never derive from that knowledge a metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, or aesthetics, because those are the philosophical sciences that define man's nature in an entirely different context.
I hope this has helped you. I would recommend that you read more of the books that contain the rest of the facts about Objectivism. You should at least read Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff that gives one an overview of the philosophy in the proper order of its development and proofs. For excerpts from all of the Objectivist material on over 200 subjects, you can consult the "Ayn Rand Lexicon" here: http://aynrandlexicon.com
Oh c’mon, MichaelM. Do you think that the one who concocted this worst piece of shit ever read a book of Ayn Rand? I’d like to tell you that Whittaker Chambers actually didn’t read Atlas Shrugged and just based his insane review of the book on what the liberal media said. On the average, it would take more than a year for anyone to read the Ayn Rand book mentioned by their lying, buffoon pighead.
It’s really hilarious to observe that this pighead just came out on this forum and declare, “hey! I read Ayn Rand’s silly books and here’s my silly review.” And it’s no surprise the imbecile and ignoramuses are applauding it. Anyone who really read and understood a few of the writings of Ayn Rand wouldn’t come up with this shitty, crappy piece of rambling. If it’s true that this idiot read the books he mentioned, then it’s either he’s a buffoon or a plain moron. And anyone who believes his stupid ramblings is two-times a moron.
The "…in a different context" is where the main error of pure rationalism lies. Philosophy is the study of things that are as of the mean time out of the reach of the special sciences. But the history of philosophy shows that once a field of philosophy has become mature enough, it will leave its mother discipline and become a full-fledged special science. All the special sciences began as subjects of philosophy: physics, mathematics, astronomy, biology, comparative ethics, political science, behavioral science and neuropsychology to name a few.
A careful examination of this "…in a different context" qualification shows that it will eventually lead to an epistemological conundrum. Why? There must only be one epistemology, one system of criteria in judging the truth of knowledge claims, whether these claims be scientific claims or philosophical claims. The "…in a different context" qualification, however, splits epistemology into two, one for the special sciences and another for philosophy. And is that not a conundrum?
"Man", that is, the human being, cannot be "studied in a different context". There must only be one context, because there is only one universal subsuming all human beings.
Now, humans are not abstract objects. The symbol 'Man' does not have the same ontological and logical status as '4' or 'the square root of negative one' or 'existence' or 'good' and 'evil'. Thus, 'Man' cannot be dealt with in a purely axiomatic system. '4' can be, and that system is mathematics. 'Existence' can be, and that system is ontology. 'Good' can be, and that system is ethics. But 'Man' cannot be.
The nature of man cannot be logically deduced from mere axioms, it can only be inferred from empirical evidence. A theoretical system dealing with man can, of course, be constructed from axioms. But in the same way that theoretical physics must always check its theoretical claims against the empirical evidence, a philosophy of man must always check its claims against the evidence gleaned from anthropology, sociology, psychology, physiology and sociobiology. And as in physics, we must always adhere to the veritable maxim: "Observation over theory." And when this maxim is adhered to, one can see the error of pronouncing any philosophy of man as final. No philosophy of man can be final because no special science studying man can be final. And because man is not an abstract object, man can be studied only in the context of a philosophy that carefully incorporates the findings of the human sciences.
Karlo,
You condemn Rand for making unsubstantiated assertions without having read the material in which the assertions are demonstrated. You then proceed to imply that, like existence and identity that you thought could not be shown to be actually axiomatic, capitalism was yet one more example. Note that your substantiation of that to be a fact also, like Rand’s, did not accompany your assertion, making you guilty of the same thing you accuse her of. I will wait to condemn you for this oversight only after I give you a chance to link me to your refutation of her validation of her assertion that is readily available if you do your homework.
Without pretending to speak for Rand, my understanding of the train of thought behind the quote you posted is this:
At the base of Rand’s radical capitalism is the fact that humans are living creatures that face, like all living entities, the fundamental alternative of existence or non-existence — life or death. Unlike other living things that are programmed by nature to pursue life, human beings are volitional and must choose one or the other. If one chooses the alternative of death, all other questions are moot. If one chooses to pursue life, then one’s life becomes implicitly the standard of measuring all values subsequently pursued in the quest for it, the quest to survive and flourish in accordance with and fulfillment of our nature.
The pursuit of a successful life requires identifications and definitions of what that entails and what kinds of actions in principle (virtues) that are required to achieve it. Our only means to that end is our capacity to think and act accordingly — to use our rational (conceptual) capacity to identify and evaluate the nature of ourselves and reality in regard to the goal.
That process is not automatic; it must be chosen. The ability to choose is the ability to be right or be wrong. So, the primary requirement for a successful life is rationality — to systematically (logically) validate (prove) the code of values (ethics) that will be the guide that enables us to act in the spontaneous choices of which our life consists confident that they rest on a solid foundation. This moral mandate pre-exists any consideration of social interrelationships and, as such, it establishes the basis for demanding autonomy in the application of one’s reason to one’s actions in any social context.
It is therefore the fact of autonomy being morally right for every individual that, when extended from the individual context to the social context, is the base for defining the political right to one’s life. The other political rights to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are corollaries of the right to life. The unique contribution of Rand is to demonstrate that individual political rights are not a gift from God or creation of the founding fathers, or privileges granted by governments, they are mandated rather by the fundamental nature of man.
Since rights are principles based on that which is the nature of all humans that are, were, or ever will be, all men must grant each other the same rights and cannot violate any right of another without implicitly denying the concept of rights altogether, forfeiting thereby any claim to a right of any kind. Also, since groups of humans are by definition not human individuals, groups do not have rights.
Ultimately, the only threat to one’s autonomy to think and act is physical force. Consequently, the capitalism of Ayn Rand is based on the requirement to remove coercion from the interrelationships among individuals living in a society. To that end she proposes a government subject to the populace through a system of checks and balances that will monopolize the use of force and utilize it only in specifically authorized instances to regulate, stop, prevent, and punish all arbitrary initiation of physical coercion or the threat thereof. I summarize its mandate as to guarantee that:
No person shall initiate the use of physical force to gain, withhold, or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another person who either created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange.
The implementation of such a government would guarantee that all human interrelationships shall be voluntary and would preclude the possibility of obtaining wealth from anyone other than by offering to them a value greater than the value of what they give in exchange.
Thus, her radical laissez-faire capitalism is not advocated because “it works”, but rather because it enables men to think and act independently (egoism), and that is necessary only because of our capacity of volitional reason and its central role in our pursuit of life.
Michael Bartolo,
Some extreme philosophies have the potential to draw a cult, but not all of them. It is actually not possible for a cult of Objectivists to exist. In the context of a philosophy (as opposed to the context of a film or a rock band), one must have a group of followers who adhere to the philosophy religiously, i.e. taken on the authority of the author of the philosophy or some subsequent leader.
Objectivism is a philosophy that holds intellectual independence as one of the highest virtues of its ethics. It condemns all ideas and actions that could qualify as “second-handing”. It condemns authoritarianism in every possible form. The only authority to which man is subservient according to the philosophy is the actual nature of existence. We can know it, we can reshape it to our benefit, but we cannot contradict it without suffering negative consequences to the quality and/or longevity of our life.
You have not read enough of Rand’s writings to have discovered that she warned her fans that Objectivism was the name of her personal philosophy. Everyone was naturally free to agree with it or disagree and to adopt her principles into their own philosophy or not, but no one, she said, should adopt any idea of hers or anyone else’s without independently validating it themselves. They must prove to themselves that each principle they adopt is consistent with the facts of the actual nature of reality, over which we have no control.
Now I would never deny that you or someone else has met an admirer of Rand who appears to take every word of Rand as the truth on her authority alone. But if you were more familiar with the philosophy, you would understand that that person could not claim to be an Objectivist, because the philosophy explicitly condemns such behavior.
In other words, a philosophy that condemns cultish behavior in all its manifestations does not have the potential of having cult followers, because if they were acting cultish, they would not qualify to be called the philosophy’s “followers”.
How I wish all of Rand's admirers were like you.
It also refers to the results of the founding of America from 1620 in Massachusetts, where individual freedom began,leaving the Old World’s ideals of the supremacy of community interests ruling through elite, like Obama wants for America today. The Objectivists are pebble-droppers who sees beyond any community limitations, as Ayn Rand described in Howard Roark’s jury summation (Fountainhead), and as described in Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity on claysamerica.com and Amazon.
Did you just imply math has no evidence supporting how it works?! Oh my goodness, math has no evidence!!! If I get two apples and three apples, how can I ever prove there are 5 Apples, short of counting? Oh No!
Justin, kindly read my reply to byafi’s comment above.
Well, what he said is true, and your apple argument is invalid. Why? Try adding one mole of sodium to one mole of chlorine. How many moles of table salt do you get? Two moles? Nope, just one mole, one mole of NaCl. So, what happened to 1+1=2? Well, it’s just not valid for this case, but 1+1=2 is always true, regardless of how the physical world works, and regardless of the fact that it is sometimes invalid to use it.
Why, the world may even work such that whenever you add three apples to a basket of two apples you get a basket containing a million apples. But that does not make 2+3=5 false, it merely means that for such a world, 2+3=5 is not valid for apples (in the same why that 1+1=2 is not valid for moles of a substance).
The fact that adding three apples to a basket containing two apples always results in the basket having five apples (given nothing else happens to the apples) is an inductive generalization. And as Hume has shown, there is no guarantee that it will be true everywhere and everywhen. It is conceivable that a universe exists where this is not the case. It is logically inconsistent to say 2+3=6, but it isn’t logically inconsistent to say that two apples added to three gives six apples. But the same can be said of the conservation of electric charge, the invariance of the “laws” of physics under the rotation of the reference frame and all the other generalizations of science. We believe them to be true not because they are certain, but because they useful.
To summarize, the truths of mathematics are a priori and their truth is shown by proof. Mathematical statements are in consequence not falsifiable (although they are disprovable). On the other hand, the generalizations of science are a posteriori and the probability that they are true is increased by evidence. These “laws” are falsifiable and verifiable, though they are not provable.
By the way, we only use mathematical addition (“2+3=5”) to describe apple addition (“two apples added to three apples gives 5 apples”) because, luckily, or unluckily, for the universe we find ourselves in, the material operation of apple addition can be adequately and excellently described by the logical operations of arithmetic. It does not have to be that way. (Recall the “mole addition” case.)
Wow thats great Pecier. Can you get me 2 apples and 3 apples that are really 6 apples. That would be an awesome trick when I do the accounting of my profits. Thanks your the best. 😀
So far, no one has came up with a basket of six apples after adding two apples to a basket of three apples. But it does not mean that it is logically inconsistent. It just means that, for this world, “adding two apples to a basket of three apples always results in the basket having five apples” is a valid generalization. But the fact that it is a valid generalization has no bearing on the truth of the mathematical statement “2+3=5” and on the falsehood of “2+3=6”.
“2+3=5” is true in all conceivable worlds.
“2+3=6” is false in all conceivable worlds.
You do not need apples and oranges and whatnot to know that “2+3=5” is true. The statement is true a priori, that is, its truth can be proved without reference to experience.
However, the same cannot be said about the “apple addition rule” and about any inductive generalization in general. Why? Consider another generalization, used by Jostein Gaarder in his novel Sophie’s World to illustrate what is often called ‘Hume’s law’. The generalization is this: “Humans can’t fly.” Well, so far, no human has been observed to fly, so the the generalization is scientifically valid. (Riding a flying vehicle does not count, of course. Only flying a-la-Superman is counted.) But can we state with absolute certainty that humans can never fly a-la-Superman? Should we be dogmatic about this one generalization?
No, because a flying human being is not a logical impossibility. We should be skeptical about Superman claims, of course, because so far, after a million observations (and after a million morons who jumped off cliffs), no one has been found to fly. But if we verify a claim that at least one person can indeed fly, there’s no need to jump off a cliff and be the next moron. The proper course of action: just revise your existing generalizations, perhaps including the laws of physics, and go on with life. Life is full of surprises. Don’t anticipate it.
I prefer the term “improbable” to “impossible” myself.
justin probably said it though, but Pecier, I’m learning much from your posts. Thank you 😀
Justin, consider the implications of your views. You say that we “prove” the statements of mathematics by looking at how apples add. At first it sounds ok, even evidently true. But consider the statement “50067+3215=53282”. It’s true, right? But how do you know that it’s true? You’ve checked it out with apples? With grains of sand? With pages of a book? There are even more extreme examples where your view becomes absurd. Take the simple statement “the inverse sine of 1 is pi” or, if you want a more concrete example, consider “the area of a circle of radius R is 4/3 times pi times the square of R”. Do you have a ruler that measures “pi meters”? Remember that pi is an irrational number.
To go to an even more extreme case, consider the use of the square root of negative one, denoted by i, in the field of mathematics known as complex analysis. The number i is important in the development of the very important gamma function in math, which is related to the factorial operation. But have you ever seen i apples? How’bout square root of two apples?
You see, the truth or falsehood of mathematical claims can be, and in fact must be, demonstrated without reference to experience.
Symmetrically, experience must not be dogmatically expected to conform with axiomatic systems. (Arithmetic is an axiomatic system, and so is complex analysis and integral calculus.) The error of expecting the empirical world to conform with an axiomatic system has had done much damage in the history of science. To provide a specific example, note that all philosophers and scientists before Reimann, Einstein and Minkowski believed with certainty that Euclidian geometry is the only geometry there is, and so physical space has to be Euclidian. But we known now that it’s not true. There are geometries where the sum of the angles of a triangle add up to a number greater than 180 degrees, and there are geometries where the sums add up to a number less than 180 degrees. In fact, in the world we live in, Euclidian geometry is only approximately true. If we want to be exact, we have to describe the physical world as having a Reimannian geometry. But this result was breathtaking precisely because before Einstein and Minkowski, people believed it self evident that the angles of a triangle always sum to 180 degrees.
I have an Idea how you can easily prove to me all these awesome ideas of yours.
Why don’t you give me an income of $2,000 a month for 30 years. If you really believe in what you just said then its not “really” $2000 anyway. What ever you have “remaining” would be more than suffice. When I see the money and contracts drawn up, notarized, and agreed by the lawyers I will accept your proposition.
Don’t worry the Lawyers fees are on me 😀 So happy to meet you.
Errata:
The inverse sine of 1 is pi/2, not pi.
The area of a circle of radius R is 4 times pi times the square of R.
Errata:
The inverse sine of 1 is pi/2, not pi.
The area of a circle of radius R is just pi times the square of R.
@Justin
You're lack of comprehension amazes me.
Once again, I won't enter the bet, because I agree with you that arithmetic addition and apple addition as well as dollar addition have the same form in the universe we find ourselves. But that fact has no bearing on the truth of arithmetic. You don't say "3+2=5 is true" because you checked it out with apples. (Remember my example with the imaginary unit 'i'?) Rather, you say "3+2=5 is true" because "3+2=5" logically follows from the axioms and definitions of arithmetic.
I find it unbelievable (not to mention disheartening) that you can't comprehend these basic ideas.
I meant "Your lack of comprehension…" So sorry 'bout that.
Math does not have evidence, it has proofs.
Science does not have proofs, it has evidences.
Math has theorems. Science has theories.
Math is certainly true. Science is pragmatically true.
Math deals with symbols and abstract objects. Science uses symbols and abstract objects to model concrete, observable phenomena.
The difference is clear and by golly, it’s a lesson in elementary logic! They should teach these things in high school.
So your Where does Randy’s Philosophy fall under: Pragmatically True or Certainly True.
I know some guys who are interested in the Randian Philosophy of Money. They also want to cut the $2,000 deal. Its no problem right? You can call this payments evidence or proof, what ever floats your boat.
😀 Your awesome Pecier, does anyone tell you that enough. Simply awesome!
Whoah! Thats awesome. I’m dazzled. You definitely know more than me. Since you keep telling me to read more. Yet I want a more practical application of this “Logic” of yours in the form of monetary transaction.
I’m astounded by you deflection and inability to make this kind of deal work out. I have such high hopes of your claimed mental abilities to make such useful contribution to my physical and mental well being.
Still despite your excuses and inability to put your concepts into a realistic form, you must be an awesome guy. I wish I was so smart as to intellectually harangue others when I fail to give them practical examples. I guess guys like Einstein and Stephen Hawkings must treat dumber folk like that all the time.
Admiring your work Pecier 😀
@Justin
Kindly visit your nearest library, pick up a book on basic philosophy, and read on the difference between 'proof' and 'evidence'.
And while you're at it, pick up a book on mathematics and check if they're talking about apples and the "evidence" for mathematics.
@Justin
By the way, I would put most of Randian Objectivism under certainly false, though I would put the best of Rand under pragmatically true.
@Justin
Ok, let me put it this way, if you find a mathematics book published by an Ivy League university telling me that we know arithmetic is true because we have “evidence” for it, get back to me. Before you do, keep on looking.
Now, do you want me to quote a book telling you that we know that arithmetic is an axiomatic system and that the truth of statements in arithmetic are proved or disproved from the axioms, definition and proven theorems of arithmetic? Cause if you want to, I can give you a dozen titles in the drop of a hat.
There’s your challenge. What are you waiting for? There’s a lot of mathematics book out there. (I’m not limiting you to arithmetic, of course. I personally prefer geometry, since I am a physics major, and I use geometry quite often.)
Huh? Why are you dictating the Philosophy? I didn’t agree to any metaphysical argument, I just want some practical proof in the form of cash. I didn’t define my terminology as would be necessary for any philosophical argument nor can I find you asking me in the previous posts.
While you certainly have one particular definition, it seems you never had bother to ask what mine was. Its refreshing to see you making such assumptions and casting off my perspective such humble confidence. I guess there is isn’t any physical output to be had in this discussion. Its too bad, I was hoping that your sophism would be have some practical use. I guess your erudite concepts have no use in making my life easier and giving me some useful financial assistance.
Oh well, good luck with all that jazz. Look me up if you can make effectively channel and multiply resources into a much larger amount that is ethically sustainable with your phili-gagging. I apologize but I have more pressing business to occupy me.
Thanks for your generous pedantry 😀
I’m sorry, but to whom is this reply directed?
By the way, if you want any practical result, be it in philosophy, in science, in engineering or in practical life, then you must learn to use words correctly. Definitions are not “mere definitions”. Bothering with the proper use of words is not pedantry or sophistry, it is one of the fundamentals of clear thinking. A coherent worldview cannot be achieved if one has not a high standard in the use of words. By golly, even sophisticated communication would be impossible if we will be sloppy with our use of words.
And proofs and evidences are like apples and oranges. Much has been achieved, not only in philosophy, but in science and consequently in engineering and technology, because we have finally made out the difference. If you want to make a practical and concrete contribution to society through modern science, then you better get your words straight.
Justin, stop making lame excuses for your lack of knowledge. Get some humility. And oh, pick up a book too, because you may just find that mathematics book I challenged you to find.
Since I don’t know to whom this reply is directed, I’ll just assume it’s directed to me.
Words must have standard definitions. A person cannot have “one particular definition” and another person a different one. If definitions are non-standard, communication would be impossible.
Or maybe that’s the reason! Maybe it’s so difficult talking to you because you believe (perhaps unwittingly) that people can have their own personal, subjective definition of words. Read your comment: “While you certainly have one particular definition, it seems you never had bother [sic] to ask what mine was.” No, I do not have my own definition of words. Most words, especially the ones that concern as now, are fine as they are defined. I wouldn’t want to argue with Webster, or with Arfken and Weber, or with The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. I used the words the way they are expected to be used in any intelligent discussion, if you know what that means. Perhaps it’s time you do the same.
Or no, wait, maybe you’re too practical to care about how words ought to be used, huh? Well, okay, if you feel going postmodernist then go ahead and write your own personal Justin Aquino Dictionary if you want; but don’t expect people to understand you.
*the ones that concern us now,…
@justinaquino
You said “Its [sic] too bad, I was hoping that your sophism would be have [sic] some practical use. I guess your erudite concepts have no use in making my life easier and giving me some useful financial assistance.” That’s wrong, wrong and once again, WRONG. The careful use of words and other symbols is the lifeblood of any discipline, be it practical or theoretical. The flight of modern science and technology, not to mention engineering and economics (since you’re so fond of money), would be unthinkable without the revolution in logic, philosophy and the clear and concise use of systematized terminologies.
If philosophers, scientists, engineers and economists throughout the last three hundred years have not been uncompromising in their lexical standards, here are just a sample of the things that would be impossible: Game Theory, the Apollo Missions, Quantum Theory, Mathematical Logic, Post-classical Economics and Modern Medicine.
If you still think bothering with definitions is impractical and is mere “sophistry”, kindly ping me, so I can give you a blow by blow account of the debates on space-time that arose due to special relativity.
@justinaquino
By the way, do you think modern mathematics would be as sophisticated as it is now if Cantor, Frege, Russell, Turing and so on were as careless in their use of words as you are?
I see you even claim to be a “Game Theory enthusiast”. But game theory, with all its very practical applications in everyday life, would be impossible if the mathematicians and economists who founded it were as sloppy as you are in their philosophy.
You want practical proof in the form of cash that mathematics is an axiomatic system and that we know the truth of its theorems not because of they have “evidences” to support them but because they follow deductively from the axioms, definitions and other theorems of mathematics? Well, the proof you’re asking for is as of this very moment in your wallet or your bank account or whatever have you. It doesn’t get any more practical than that, does it? You want solid proof? Go to your nearest ATM.
Now, if you will persist in excusing your ignorance by comparing exacting thinking to “phili-gagging”, then at least quit the intellectual pretension: real mathematics enthusiasts are careful in their use of words, and they certainly know the difference between proof and evidence and between induction and deduction.
Extreme philosophies has the potential of having cult followers. Just like Communism.
Nice article!
Great work
You claim that “… Objectivism is just pure philosophy, it’s not science. There is no evidence to support its claims and therefore it is not scientifically justifiable.”
Isn’t that as well true of mathematics? Mathematics is designed to be logical and consistent as possible, but there is no evidence to support its claims (what’s the evidence that 1+1=2? – not logic, but evidence), so it must therefore be not scientifically justifiable.
So what? Mathematics is NOT a science, any more than is Objectivism.
The rest of your post is even sillier.
What you said about mathematics is true, and I share your criticism.
However, Karlo’s main point about Objectivism not being scientific has an underlying assumption that I think has great truth. The assumption is this: any philosophy that wishes to have a command of people’s minds and hearts must take into consideration concrete facts about the world. That is, it must include inductive arguments. But the conclusions of inductive arguments are never final, therefore no world view ought to be final.
A corollary of the assumption: philosophies that are built on purely rational grounds and are constructed using only deductive arguments are empty and useless since they are mere word games.
Take math. 4-3=1. That’s true. Other than a pleasant and valid use of symbols, now what?
Now put in physics. If you remove 3 kg of rock from a 4-kg boulder, what remains is a rock of mass 1 kg. This “law of the conservation of mass” may not be as certain as “4-3=1” since its evidence is inductive and not deductive, but it is precisely because of this that it is the more interesting of the two propositions.
Similarly, it may be true that Objectivism is a logically coherent system of ideas (though I don’t think it is). But if it is all there is to Objectivism, then it does not deserve our attention except perhaps as a very elaborate word game.
That’s an elegant and yet simple explanation. It illuminates the idea very well. That’s really cool of you to write a well-composed explanation. I think many will find your explanation enlightening. Cheers to that!
“But if it is all there is to Objectivism, then it does not deserve our attention except perhaps as a very elaborate word game.”
Not to mention a basis for some truly kick-ass video games D
Really? What’s the title of the game?
I think he’s referring to Bioshock. The story of the game is based on Ayn Rand’s fiction novels and philosophy.