Wealthcare: Ayn Rand's Retardation. Damn you Spelling Nazis!

[Queequeg]

Perception - if "objective - is error-proof and a reliable (indeed the only reliable) soruce of knowlege.

I find her objections to Physics hilarious.  Kind of hard to argue with an atomic bomb, but somehow the Objectivists do it.  Very Deutsche Physik.

[MadImmortalMan]

I find her objections to Physics hilarious.  Kind of hard to argue with an atomic bomb, but somehow the Objectivists do it.  Very Deutsche Physik.

Indeed. It would just melt your face off. The damn things can't be reasoned with.

[Caliga]

I find Shakespeare's writing impossible to understand. 

You, Sir, are a moron.

*shrug* I is what I is.

[Caliga]

Well, such a moral solipsism ("one's own happiness or rational self-interest") even after taking into account the reference to laissez-faire capitalism can't be fairly defined as a mere 'Fuck the workers'; actually is far closer to 'Fuck everyone'.

Basically, yeah.

[Caliga]

Pretty much.  She would have us erase 50 million years of simian evolution in addition to every notion of charity and compassion.  So, basically, I don't think it is so much the opposite of Marxism, as while I find the basic value system behind Marxism (utilitarianism, Christian-style charity) valuable and share some of it, Ayn Rand ditches all of that for insanity.

I don't think Rand was opposed to the notion of charity per se.  I think an Objectivist would have no problem with supporting charity so long as you want to do so because it makes you happy, as opposed to feeling compelled/guilted into doing so.

[jimmy olsen]

Well, such a moral solipsism ("one's own happiness or rational self-interest") even after taking into account the reference to laissez-faire capitalism can't be fairly defined as a mere 'Fuck the workers'; actually is far closer to 'Fuck everyone'.

Pretty much.  She would have us erase 50 million years of simian evolution in addition to every notion of charity and compassion.  So, basically, I don't think it is so much the opposite of Marxism, as while I find the basic value system behind Marxism (utilitarianism, Christian-style charity) valuable and share some of it, Ayn Rand ditches all of that for insanity.

Simians are actually pretty selfish.

[Caliga]

Well, such a moral solipsism ("one's own happiness or rational self-interest") even after taking into account the reference to laissez-faire capitalism can't be fairly defined as a mere 'Fuck the workers'; actually is far closer to 'Fuck everyone'.

Pretty much.  She would have us erase 50 million years of simian evolution in addition to every notion of charity and compassion.  So, basically, I don't think it is so much the opposite of Marxism, as while I find the basic value system behind Marxism (utilitarianism, Christian-style charity) valuable and share some of it, Ayn Rand ditches all of that for insanity.

Simians are actually pretty selfish.

I think maybe he was trying to say that we've evolved away from 'animal' behavior which, if so, is something I completely disagree with.  In general we like to delude ourselves into thinking so, though. 

I think it's important to work to overcome/suppress our basic instincts, or else we would have a far more violent and rule-of-might society... but I think it's equally important to acknowledge and respect our animal nature.

[garbon]

How do you mean?  The Greeks talked about the definition of art.  There is a chunk of the Republic dedicated to it. 

I had to write a paper once about Suprematism and Plato's Republic.

[Queequeg]

Simians are actually pretty selfish.

Social is probably a better term. 50,000,000 years ago our ancestors didn't do much socially besides mate.  One of the biggest pushes in the evolution of monkeys was towards more complex social behavior, which ultimately results in thinks like complex social organizations, empathy and group thinking. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness; that individual persons are in contact with this reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic;

So far, so good.

No it's not so good - you have to get into the details.  Rand starts with what appears to be an empricist position - that knowledge of the world is derived solely from experience, particular sensory experience.  She rejects Kant's synthetic a priori judgments (actually she doesn't really - her acolytes did.  I don't think she ever read Kant's work much less understood it). Simultaneously, she wades into the "problem of universals" and posits what on its face appears to be a nominalist or conceptualist position - i.e. she denies the reality of universals. 

At this point it seems to me there are two ways for her to go - some kind of skeptical empiricism in the tradition of Hume and Quine or some kind of philosophical pragmatism.  She doesn't go in either direction - however, because both of these paths do not permit epistemological certainty which is essential to Rand.  So without skipping a beat, she careens unexpectedly back into philsophical realism.  While simultaneously acknowledging that concepts are mental inventions and that all understanding of the world is derived from and filtered through individual sense impressions, she nonetheless proposes an "objective" process of concept formation that somehow turns all these mental operations into a foolproof depiction of some underlying reality.  How this magical transformation from subjective sense impression into "objective" concepts occurs is never satisfactorily explained.  Rand ultimately falls back on seemingly tautological axioms such as "existence exists" and "A=A" in order to try to maintain some coherence in her philosophical system.  Taken as a whole, her philosophy amounts to a personal, idiosyncratic weltanschaung masquerading as some kind of rational philosophical system.

[Eddie Teach]

You're bringing in a lot of stuff that isn't in those 4 lines.

[The Minsky Moment]

You're bringing in a lot of stuff that isn't in those 4 lines.

That's why I said you have to look into the details.

She "wrote" a book about all this, which AFAIK is the only non-fictional book length work that explains her philosophy.

think for a second about what "human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic" really means.  The devil is in the detail.

[Savonarola]

No it's not so good - you have to get into the details.  Rand starts with what appears to be an empricist position - that knowledge of the world is derived solely from experience, particular sensory experience.  She rejects Kant's synthetic a priori judgments (actually she doesn't really - her acolytes did.  I don't think she ever read Kant's work much less understood it). Simultaneously, she wades into the "problem of universals" and posits what on its face appears to be a nominalist or conceptualist position - i.e. she denies the reality of universals. 

At this point it seems to me there are two ways for her to go - some kind of skeptical empiricism in the tradition of Hume and Quine or some kind of philosophical pragmatism.  She doesn't go in either direction - however, because both of these paths do not permit epistemological certainty which is essential to Rand.  So without skipping a beat, she careens unexpectedly back into philsophical realism.  While simultaneously acknowledging that concepts are mental inventions and that all understanding of the world is derived from and filtered through individual sense impressions, she nonetheless proposes an "objective" process of concept formation that somehow turns all these mental operations into a foolproof depiction of some underlying reality.  How this magical transformation from subjective sense impression into "objective" concepts occurs is never satisfactorily explained.  Rand ultimately falls back on seemingly tautological axioms such as "existence exists" and "A=A" in order to try to maintain some coherence in her philosophical system.  Taken as a whole, her philosophy amounts to a personal, idiosyncratic weltanschaung masquerading as some kind of rational philosophical system.

Er... how did you acquire such a detailed knowledge of objectivism? 

[Valmy]

idiosyncratic weltanschaung masquerading as some kind of rational philosophical system.

Hobbes has a message for you:

[grumbler]

Well, such a moral solipsism ("one's own happiness or rational self-interest") even after taking into account the reference to laissez-faire capitalism can't be fairly defined as a mere 'Fuck the workers'; actually is far closer to 'Fuck everyone'.

Laissez-faire capitalism is not only close to, but right on top of, "fuck no one."  That is precisely its problem.