Ayn Rand, Objectivism, Capitalism, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Starjet, Jun 5, 2019.

  1. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    First up: Name one principle Ayn Rand was wrong about. Just one. Anyone. Anyone?

    For starters, try refuting this:

    Ayn Rand: "Axioms are usually considered to be propositions identifying a fundamental, self-evident truth. But explicit propositions as such are not primaries: they are made of concepts. The base of man’s knowledge—of all other concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought—consists of axiomatic concepts. "
     
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  2. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here's one such axiom: "Nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect”. It is composed of the following concepts: Nothingness, Being, Sameness, Time, Respect, Ability.
    Each one of these concepts rests on these fundamental axiomatic concepts: Existence, Identity, and consciousness; or if you prefer: reality is real, being is being something, and you know it.

    In other words, if reality isn't real then something can be and can not be at the same time and the same respect. If identity isn't being something, then something can be anything and nothing, or everything and something. And if consciousness is not consciousness, how would anyone know it or care?

    In essence, Existence is everything that is, and everything that is, is, something and behaves according, and consciousness tells us what that something else.

    Or if you'd rather, A is A, behaves as A, and you damn well know it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2019
  3. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Well list all of Rand's principles so we can go through them one by one.
     
  4. doombug

    doombug Well-Known Member

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    Let me smoke a couple of doobies and I'll get back with ya.
     
  5. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I know, I know, you want us all to live in Galt’s Gulch but consider this, not everyone would be regarded as fit to take their place in the Randian version of heaven. From my perspective this notion of Rand being philosophically faultless is absurd, just as the plot of Atlas Shrugged is absurd.
    The sad part about Rand’s body of work is the unjustified academic snobbery that ignores her work. Even prestigious Dictionaries of Philosophy leave her out entirely despite the profound infuence her writings still have on the political scene.
    Then we have the question of her private life, which confronted honestly could have her cast as one of the villians in her black and white novels.
    Speaking of which there’s another form of snobbery about Rand, the total refusal of the literary world to acknowledge her as a great writer. Judged on continuing sales alone that’s absurd.
     
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  6. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You forget to tell us those concepts/laws even Rand acknowledged came from Aristotle. They appear to be the minimum foundation for any mind to operate in a sane and effective manner. However, to modern philosophers, if accepted, they mitigate against the over tossed word salad that passes for academic philosophy today .
    It’s when we get into the practical and effective side of implementing strict Objectivist thought in the political realm we get into real trouble as she did in her private life. Anyone interested in her thought should get hold of ‘The Ideas of Ayn Rand’ by Ronald E Merrill.
    Now to throw a bomb into Galt’s Gulch. The laws of supply and demand tell us free enterprise works best because people will always act out of rational self interest. If you can’t see a problem with that theory you really should be hiding away in Galt’s Gulch.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
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  7. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Geez, I just ask for a simple refutation of existence exists, or other Objectivist principle.

    As to those who think Ayn Rand’s fiction or non fiction have no basis in reality....think again.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
  8. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Giving it some thought.
     
  9. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not necessary.
     
  10. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not Rand’s argument at all. Not even close. Nor is it an economic principle.

    What the law of supply and demand states is they seek equilibrium, thereby setting market price. This affects vices as well as virtues.

    Though it is true the market requires the best within us, it does not guarantee each of us will behave accordingly.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
  11. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Rand in her own words on the free market:

    “A free market is a continuous process that cannot be held still, an upward process that demands the best (the most rational) of every man and rewards him accordingly. While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority is free to demonstrate. The “philosophically objective” value of a new product serves as the teacher for those who are willing to exercise their rational faculty, each to the extent of his ability. Those who are unwilling remain unrewarded—as well as those who aspire to more than their ability produces. The stagnant, the irrational, the subjectivist have no power to stop their betters . . . .”

    So, though it is true the best of the market demands the best within us , it doesn’t guarantee it—-we are human beings, not one of Pavlov’s dog.
     
  12. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Ayn Rand: “My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

    1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

    2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

    3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

    4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.”
    http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivism.html

    Or if you prefer:

    1) Water quenches thirst. (Reality)
    2) Thirsty? Find water. (Reason)
    3) By your own effort for your own sake (Ethics)
    4) Make your own way (Capitalism)

    So take a long cool drink on a hot summer day and smile at the universe. It really is just that simple.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
  13. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Depends what you mean by ‘no basis in reality’. I do confess however I’ve met a few Wesley Mouches in my day.
    https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Wesley_Mouch
    As to the existence exists claim it’s one of those all too obvious notions academic philosophers loathe. If they’re too stupid and/or simplistic to claim existence doesn’t exist they have no justification for making any assertion whatever. If they have any doubt they exist, as did Berkly who claimed he only existed in ‘the mind of God’, who and what do they imagine is making any such claim?
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2019
  14. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Incorrect. Reason has for most of human history been an impedance to survival, not a benefit.

    For example: "Rationalists always wonder: how come people aren’t more rational? How come you can prove a thousand times, using Facts and Logic, that something is stupid, and yet people will still keep doing it?

    Henrich hints at an answer: for basically all of history, using reason would get you killed.

    A reasonable person would have figured out there was no way for oracle-bones to accurately predict the future. They would have abandoned divination, failed at hunting, and maybe died of starvation.

    A reasonable person would have asked why everyone was wasting so much time preparing manioc. When told “Because that’s how we’ve always done it”, they would have been unsatisfied with that answer. They would have done some experiments, and found that a simpler process of boiling it worked just as well. They would have saved lots of time, maybe converted all their friends to the new and easier method. Twenty years later, they would have gotten sick and died, in a way so causally distant from their decision to change manioc processing methods that nobody would ever have been able to link the two together.

    Henrich discusses pregnancy taboos in Fiji; pregnant women are banned from eating sharks. Sure enough, these sharks contain chemicals that can cause birth defects. The women didn’t really know why they weren’t eating the sharks, but when anthropologists demanded a reason, they eventually decided it was because their babies would be born with shark skin rather than human skin. As explanations go, this leaves a lot to be desired. How come you can still eat other fish? Aren’t you worried your kids will have scales? Doesn’t the slightest familiarity with biology prove this mechanism is garbage? But if some smart independent-minded iconoclastic Fijian girl figured any of this out, she would break the taboo and her child would have birth defects."

    I highly recommend reading the entire blog post, which is a review of the anthropology book, The Secret of Our Success.
     
  15. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No way. There are so many errors in your assertions, it bogs my rational mind.
     
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  16. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    Primarily I criticize her for her shortcomings when it comes to ethics and human nature. Particularly her failure to realize that Man is fundamentally a social species.
     
  17. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    I will await your analysis of my errors, although technically they are not my errors. The argument is the basis of the book being reviewed. I just agree with it.
     
  18. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Ayn Rand, the woman who used social security and medicare?
     
  19. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Whose assertions? Without a quote we can’t know which remark you’re addressing.
     
  20. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    True but I have to watch myself using known facts about philosopher’s lives as a means of denegrating their philosophy. Take for instance Bertrain Russel who was prone to rattle on about women’s equality yet treated the women in his life abominably. We can scream hypocracy but that doesn’t carry any weight disproving theory.
     
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  21. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    Uh oh, I smell an argument for free **** coming
     
  22. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I’ll do one: reason, an impediment. Let’s see, understanding reality makes it hard to live realistically. A contradiction, and they can’t exist. There’s an error there somewhere. If not metaphysically, then epistemologically.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2019
  23. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The contradiction comes with the presumption we’re all capable of fully rational thought. As to understanding reality Rand got that almost right in that her epistemology tells us (from Ronald E Merrill’s “The Ideas of Ayn Rand” publ’ Open Court 1991)
    To abbreviate Rand’s already simplified summary, the problem may be stated as follows. Is there such a thing as a ‘correct’ definition for some particular concept? The most commonly held modern view is that there is not; a definition is an arbitrary convenience. This ’nominalist/conceptualist’ or Humpty-Dumpty school of thought holds that definitions need only be consistently maintained during a particular discussion. Just as Americans drive on the right side of the road, and British on the left, a concept such as ‘bird’ may be defined as a feathered animal, or as an egg-laying animal. As long as everyone is using the definition (or road) agrees to accept a particular procedure, the exact procedure chosen is of no importance.
    Opposed to this is the ‘realist’ school of thought, in its pure Platonic or diluted Aristotelian variants, which hold that there is only one correct definition for a given concept. What, though, could give this ‘essence’ of the concept its special validity? The ‘essence’ is real in this view - it actually exists, as a Platonic form or some such entity.essense’ of a concept. The realist postulates the actual existence of the essence; essence is metaphysical. For Rand, definitions are not arbitrary - there is an essence - but the essence is not metaphysical but epistemological. Though concepts are in the mind, they are not arbitrary because they reflect reality, which is objective.
    Now why should anyone bother with all this? Rand’s answer would be that philosophy is practical. The nominalist view assumes that thinking is a matter of detached, abstract debate. It is a game, and the only requirement for the rules is that they be self-consistent and agreed on by all players.
    But for Rand, thinking is man’s means of survival, and it’s rules are absolutely critical. If you pick the wrong way to define a concept, it may not be ‘Well, that’s an interesting way to look at the subject’; it could kill you.

    As to ‘understanding reality’ we have today an added problem exacerbated by newer forms of communication such a social media. Narrow world views are easily reinforced by exclusively interacting with self selecting echo chambers of like minded participants. On a vast scale, such as in China, state censorship literally denies millions access to the real
    Contradictions can’t exist? I’m not sure that can be applied in it’s pure form to the operations of many human minds. Add to this the tendency of our species towards tribalism in ever expanding groupings and we really do have to admit we’re not living in Galt’s Gulch or anything like it and probably never will. Like Rand I suggest this is far from a mere abstract debate, the very survival of our species is at stake.
    Not that I’m suggesting Randian economics fully implemented could prevent that.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2019
  24. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    Rational thought is an abstraction
     
  25. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It’s application and validation in the real world isn’t. And no, I won’t get into a debate about what’s real, and what isn’t.
     

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