1. An interesting discussion by an archivist of the Ayn Rand Institute on an abandoned book project by Rand that inspired Atlas Shrugged.
2. The Ayn Rand Fan Club celebrated its 100th episode with a discussion of the views of prominent ARI spokesmen on ICE and immigration. It’s funny to watch Yaron Brook constantly change his positions, proclaiming each iteration with exact certitude and almost contempt for what he previously held.
3. David Kelley is the most prominent Objectivist philosopher outside of ARI Objectivism. The Atlas Society is now publishing many of his shorter works. I’ve always wanted to read his A Theory of Abstraction. Rand’s followers consider her theory of concept formation to be her most seminal achievement. One criticism is that she presents no proof for her theory (for example, her description of how a child learns to differentiate tables and chairs). I’ve heard that Kelley does provide some evidence in this book.
>Rand’s followers consider her theory of concept formation to be her most seminal achievement.
ReplyDeleteI have long thought 'Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" to be Rand's weakest work.
>One criticism is that she presents no proof for her theory (for example, her description of how a child learns to differentiate tables and chairs).
Another criticism is that the concepts are hazy and ill-defined. What, pray tell, is "unit measurement" when it comes to something like the concept "chair." A "unit" might be an actual physical instance of something such as "10 apartment units in the building," in which case there's nothing abstract about the idea since it just means "an instance of." Or it might have a more metrological meaning, such as "an inch as a unit of measurement," in which case it refers to an arbitrarily marked-off "bit" of something that already exists in infinite degree such as the quality called "length." As a metrological unit, the "inch" is then used to compare multiples of itself against some other entity exhibiting the quality of length to obtain an arithmetical comparison; i.e., a wooden stick known as a ruler comprises 12 of those units called inches." But how does either of those ideas of "unit" have anything to do with the abstract concept of "chair" is beyond me; in fact, it's absurd to think so.
>I’ve heard that Kelley does provide some evidence in this book.
The video interviews of Kelley I've watched on YouTube don't inspire confidence. For one thing, he's not an engaging speaker, with his constant stops and stars, as well as digressions and throat-clearing. For another, he's no clearer in his approach to concepts than Rand. Finally, I fail to understand why Objectivists are hung-up on the apparent need to invent a "logic of induction." While induction and deduction are both operations of the intellect, only deduction is demonstrative, following formal rules moving from premises to conclusion. The conclusion need not be factually true; it only needs to be "valid"; i.e., correctly arrived at from the premises in a purely formal manner. "Induction" is not a species of logic; it's a species of argument intended to persuade something to someone; "persuade," not "logically demonstrate as necessarily true." A number of logicians from the past have noted that induction is a form of "argument from analogy" intended to persuade someone that "if A is true in one instance, it's likely to be true in other instances." That's not a strict logical demonstration of anything, even if it's good operating practice in a field like scientific inquiry. As Popper noted in much of his writing, while no amount of compiling consistent inductive observations can establish logical proof of something, just a single contradictory observation can serve as a logical disproof.