Alonzo Fyfe

Obviously?

It is from this that my 2nd objection comes -- Rand's 'derivation' of the intrinsic value of life from the instrumental value of life.

Where she discusses Hume, Rand's "refutation" begins by interpreting Hume as saying that 'is' statements are entirely irrelevant to 'ought' judgments. She shows this view to be an absurdity and, from this, claims to refute Hume.

But the view she is objecting to is a man constructed of pure home-spun straw.

Hume's argument that 'is' statements are not sufficient to prove any given ought conclusion. The view that Rand argues against is the view that 'is' statements are not necessary to prove any given ought conclusion. The view Rand refutes is not Hume's. The is/ought problem stands.

xorbie

You know why Rand sucks? Because I say so. Have I read any of hear philosophy? No, but that's ok. The reason I don't like her is because I hated reading "Anthem" - it was such an obvious and pathetic straw man. Moreover, anyone who needs to form some wierd cult and get all political with it seems to me to be a little light on the philosophy. Try Nietzsche for something that has actual philosophical merit.

Clutch

Right. And just what Hume have you read?

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, I see little sense in making a big deal out of who read what. Of course, we have all read different things and bring different backgrounds into the discussion.

What matters is whether the arguments are deductively sound or inductively strong.

If one of us has read an argument that he or she thinks another might have missed, the best thing to do is not to insult the other for failing to read it (we each only have so many hours to do such things) -- but to post the argument so that it can be critiqued.

If anybody wants more detail on the objections that I have posted, I would be happy to provide them.

Clutch

Quite right, Alonzo; I repent me of my fury, that I did kill him.

JERDOG

Alonzo tell me. Acording to you no one ever makes an argument unless in your mind that argument is sound?

Here's more of the argument against Hume that you said "Rands people" "never" talked about.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/eve...anRandHume.pdf

And I'm kind of had my feelings hurt that you never answered my question here.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...5&pagenumber=3

In your last post you try the intimidation factor and try to shift the goal post.

I don't remember ever making the claim that I was well read in Hume. Nor did I ever make the claim that I was a Hume follower in high school.

Alonzo Fyfe

It is true that I sometimes use phrases like "did not attempt to address X" as a shortcut for "did not seriously attempt to address X". Particularly in the case of straw-man and other distorted interpretations of an argument, I will sometimes write that Agent did not attempt to address the objection but, instead, misinterpreted the objection and turned it into something she could handle."

It may be a lazy way of speaking or writing, and perhaps a habit best corrected. Yet, I can't help an intuitive sense that addressing a concern requires some sort of good-faith effort. Absent a good-faith effort, the concern is not really being addressed.

It's the same sense in which we may say to someone, "You didn't even try to get here on time," where the effort was so small that it demonstrated an overall lack of concern.

I do not believe that Ayn Rand gave a serious, intellectually honest attempt to understand Hume's is/ought argument.

Now, I should add, I am no great worshipper of Hume's distinction. I believe that there must be and is a bridge across the is/ought chasm. Otherwise, if 'ought' lives in one kind of universe and 'is' lives in another, we have a hard time explaining how properties in one universe can be known about and influence actions in the other.

Ultimately, the fact remains, Ayn Rand fails to adequately respond to Hume's is/ought problem.

Oh. I am sorry about the hurt feelings. With the number of different threads I paticipate in, I sometimes lose track of where I am in each one.

JGL53

I never read any of Rand's fictional works for the same reason I never read any Faulkner - after about ten pages or so I realized I was bored shitless.

The first Rand book I read was on Objectivist epistemology which I had stumbled across back around 1982. I was somewhat impressed, and read most of her other works that are in paperback. I became somewhat of a fan for a couple of years and debated in her favor against many people.

But the arguments of others gradually caused me to rethink my quasi-hero worship of her, and I began to seek out and read critiques of her work. And I read both the Branden's books.

My conclusion for many years now has been that most of her philosophy is useless crap, at least for me. Some people still think her philosophy is the greatest invention since sliced bread, but as long as I am not forced to listen to or read their yammerings, I'm happy if they're happy.

xorbie

Finding myself shitless occurs often when I read philosophy, as I often do so while in the bathroom... kinda ironic no. I tend to have the problem of not being able to read more than 2 or 3 pages of any philsopher because I start to space out and think about my own little philosophy, often slightly inspired by some little nugget of wisdom covered up in pages of length nothingness that the philosopher has just given me.

Alonzo Fyfe

Rather than turning this into a discussion of the reading habits of various participants -- as exciting as such a discussion may be -- I think I will focus instead on the original question.

I can restate the problems that I have with objectivism as follows.

First, there are no intrinsic values, no categorical imperatives. Every observation I have made in the real world, and every set of data that I have encountered, where 'value' is evident, it shows itself as individuals acting to bring about that which they desire, or to thwart the creation of that to which they have an aversion.

Whenever anybody uses a term like 'ought' or 'should' or 'best' (or even desire-laden terms such as healthy, dangerous, injury, harm, benefit, or any term where an evaluation is built into the meaning of the word), I look for the set of desires that the object of evaluation will fulfill -- or thwart, for those things called bad. A person speaking of something having a value-property, without relating it to some set of desires, is speaking about something that does not exist.

You cannot prove existence of entities (such as desire-independent value) merely by looking at the definition of a term. An example of such an argument is the ontological argument for the existence of God. God is perfect. If God did not exist, then God would not be perfect. Therefore, God exists. This argument fails because, as the philosophy cliche goes, 'existence is not a predicate'.

Ayn Rand's argument for her objectivist values is, basically, an ontological argument. However, instead of an argument depending on the definition of God, her ontological argument attempts to derive the existence of intrinsic (objective) values from the definition of man. 'Man is a rational animal.'

'Man is a rational animal' fails as a descriptive definition -- a theory that makes sense of the way people actually use the term. If we take it as a stipulative definition, then the best we can derive from such a definition is that, to the degree that one is irrational, one is not human. But one cannot infer from this that one ought to be rational, any more than one can infer from this that one ought to be a human being.

And, ultimately, one cannot prove the existence of a value that exists independent of desire by looking at the definition of terms. One has to look at the universe, make observations, and show that the best theory for explaining certain observations requires that we postulate desire-independent value.

[Note: I take their use of moral-ought to relate the object of evaluation to good desires, where good desires are desires that themselves tend to fulfill other desires, all consistent with the idea that nothing has value -- whether positive or negative -- independent of its capacity to fulfill or thwart desires.]