humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:27:05 -0800, Charles Bell
wrote:

>On Mar 6, 6:55 pm, Malrassic Park wrote:
>
>> Talk about having your Direct Realism and eating it too. Or perhaps
>> she was having her word-salad and eating it too. And what is this
>> 'scientific, conceptual discovery'? Which scientific article is it
>> based out of? Who thought of it first? Who should Rand be citing
>> here? Why should we even believe her? How did she manage to have
>> knowledge of sensations without direct awareness of them individually
>> much less as groups? Blank-out.
.
>Rand showed incredible prescience here (pun intended). What we are
>*scientifically* learning about how the brain works is very much like
>how Rand describes the flow from sensation to percept to concept to
>knowledge. The brain does receive electro-chemical impulses of
>sensations directly but it cannot *ab initio* do anything with these
>to build percepts, let alone abstractions. It must build a hierarchy
>first from comparing previous sensations, classify them into percepts
>of the same kind and build connections (often falsely at first)
>between them [Seeing a red apple, then touching a red apple then
>eating a red apple are all built into a percept of "red apple" with no
>conscious thought, as we commonly mean "conscious thought" at the pre-
>conceptual level]. The brain is hierarchical in every function it
>performs, going from simple to complex. Rand's [hierarchical]
>contextual epistemology is brilliant in light of the fact that she
>discovered it without any scientific/empirical knowledge of how the
>brain does actually work -- which is clearly hierarchical and
>contextual. There is *no* scientific evidence whatsoever that a
>concept is somehow *there* in the brain before sensation, only that
>once a concept is formulated through abstraction, the brain
>automatically compares every new percept to every concept that was
>previously built, and likewise in steps before that, every sensation
>into percepts previously registered.

You didn't cite any studies either, but I didn't say she was wrong.
And if she turns out to be right, then it only proves that Rand
exchanged prescience for science in her claim. To be an honest
commentator she should have written, "The knowledge of sensations
as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much
later: it is a *prescient*, conceptual discovery."

I noticed you used the word "classify." How does a brain classify
things? Conceptually? Neurologically? What is a neurological form of
class? Is the answer to the problem of universals neurological?

There is not one word of epistemology in your entire post. As for
'hierarchy', I've seen that word tossed around on this forum without
evincing a clue to the fact that not all knowledge requires a
hierarchy. "Hierarchy" is simply one of the "holy words."
--
We usually go over the top w/ our new found freedoms.
Unfortunately, her 'followers' are as radical as Pat
Robertson's. Discernment goes out the window.
- A youtube poster