Micah, Well, like I said. A fuller explanation will have to wait till I read the book, but the amazon clip of his afterward tells us his conclusions in summary form and I'll be glad to type them out for you. what the heck. Us idealists are like that.
Scott Ryan: We began by describing the essence of Objectivism as the claim "there is no God, and man is made in His image." We have shown that Rand's arguments do not make sense on their own terms. Rand is trying to show, that we can have reason and liberty without God -- and she is doing so, not by following the argument where it leads, but by determining in advance where she wants the argument to lead and rejecting, for altogether inadequate reason, everything that stands in the way of her preferred conclusions. In short, she deliberately eliminates from philosophy every doctrine, every tenet, which she associates with theism, ultimately for no better reason than that she does associate it with theism. She tended to construct false dichotomies, argue against one side, and conclude in favor of the other side. For example, she argued in effect as follows: morally, a living organism's actions must serve either its own good or someone else's; if they serve someone else's the organism will die; therefore the proper beneficiary of the organism's actions is itself. The possibility that one's own good and that of others are not at odds in the first place does not emerge until much later-- and even then, the initial premise is not questioned. Likewise, she argued for the "primacy of existence" against the "primacy of consciousness" by simply importing into her argument the presumption that the two "primacies" are opposed to one another; the possibility that they are as inseparably related as two poles of a magnet is just never raised. She also tended to attach riders to important opposing positions, reject the riders and assume (or at least write as though) she had thereby disproved the positions themselves. For example, she rejected the existence of real universals which the mind apprehends passively and thought she had thereby rejected the existence of real universals, period. Likewise, she rejected any versions of nominalism and conceptualism which held resemblances to be vague or arbitrary, and thought that she had thereby rejected nominalism and conceptualism, period. She also tended to be vague about the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition. She failed to distinguish, for example, between the claim that sensory perception is a valid means of acquiring knowledge and the claim that is is the ONLY valid means of acquiring knowledge; she failed to distinguish between the recognition that it is morally acceptable to pursue one's own interests and the claim that it is morally acceptable ONLY to pursue one's own interests." There's more, Micah, but perhaps I'll let you respond to what's been offered before I type any more. I'm idealistic, but I'm not THAT idealistic. John On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 1:39 PM, Micah <[email protected]> wrote: > John, > > I looked at few of the links, 3 out of the first 7 were broken and the > other four were personal attacks that actually didn't refute her philosophy > at all, but they all attempted to belittle Objectivism. I'll sift through > more to see what's the rhubarb, but in the meantime, what do you see as > errors in her philosophy. > > Thank you > Micah > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Carl" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 8:39 PM > Subject: Re: [MD] critique of Randian Epistemology for my birthday > > > Well I'm planning on reading the book in full Micah, but I remember a few >> mentioned from the amazon snippet yesterday. Here's a >> link<http://world.std.com/~mhuben/critobj.html> >> : >> >> And here's one< >> http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1230539&lastnode_id=162913 >> >for >> >> Ron too, just cuz it's got some congruence with his Morat >> interpretation >> of the MoQ that I found highly amusing. >> >> John >> >> >> >> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Micah <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> John, >>> >>> I would like to know what her mistakes were. >>> >>> Thank you >>> Micah >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Craig, >>> >>>> The author's critique is based upon the mistakes she willingingly made, >>>> the >>>> egregious errors committed knowingly in the service of "exactly what she >>>> set >>>> out to do". And I'm not surprised that a scholarly reading would reveal >>>> the >>>> epistemological weakness in Individualism or Objectivism, are you? >>>> >>>> Heck, that's easy enough to do from my armchair QB position. >>>> >>>> John >>>> >>>> >>> Moq_Discuss mailing list >>> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. >>> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org >>> Archives: >>> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ >>> http://moq.org/md/archives.html >>> >>> Moq_Discuss mailing list >> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. >> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org >> Archives: >> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ >> http://moq.org/md/archives.html >> > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
