--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Chad Cooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I just found this posting a few minutes ago on Deja. It really >enraged the >objectivists. > >Anyway, This got me a little defensive. However, I am afraid I am >also >guilty of what I accuse them of, which is blind biasness. > > Well, I think that objectivism is a third rate philosophy and Rand is definately a third rater. I use to post there and annoy the objectivists with discussions of the inconsistancies between QM and objectivism. . FWIW, I've got a philosophy degree and had an objectivist girlfriend back when I a senior in college many years. She got me to read Atlas Shrugged, which I thought was lousy. The heroes were students of physics and philosophy, like I was but Rand seemed to get things rather wrong. My personal opinion is that Rand is a third rate philosopher and objectivism is one of the lesser philosophical movements. (YMMV) I didn't see DB's article, so I'm cannot really comment fully on it. The part that I saw does look like he shot from the hip. He isn't all wrong, but he does tend to paint with a rather broad brush. It can be an occupational hazard with some physicists. One tends to overtrust one's own keen insight because one has a history of being right in a number of areas. Objectivism is not supposed to be a form of idealism: it is supposed to be a branch of realism. I think DB�s argument is that its really idealistic instead of realistic because observations do not support the superstructure that objectivists wish to have supported. I�m guessing he obtained his understanding by first talking to libertarians and then a bit of reading. (This is all conjecture, of course). The problems with objectivism, are a bit more subtle than DB projects, I think. First, objectivists think that observations allow us to deduce a wealth of things about reality that there is absolutely no scientific justification for: i.e. their viewpoint that selfishness is the only morality. They make a number of a prioi assumptions that they claim are based in observation, but they do not hold themselves to the standards that scientists in verifying these standards. The second problem that I see is reconciling objectivism with QM. Examples from the wave particle duality, to renormalization, to virtual partons are strongly supportive of the viewpoint that scientific theories model what we observe instead of describe an objective reality. There are interpretations of QM that are consistent with objectivism, but only in a problematic kind of way. These interpretations require the assumption of hidden falsifications of relativity or hidden backwards in time signals. The problem with the first should be clear: established theories are falsified by observations in science, not by assumptions about the unseen. The problem with the second is that if backwards in time signals exist, causal loops should exist (i.e. a transmitter sending a signal back in time to blow itself up). Dan'm Traeki Ring of Crystallized Knowledge. Known for calculating, but not known for shutting up _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
