humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:06:00 -0700, Fred Weiss
wrote:

>On Mar 10, 6:55 am, Charles Bell wrote:
>> On Mar 10, 4:09 am, Malrassic Park wrote:
.
>> > When is this discussion going to stop playing physicist and
>> > neurologist, and get down to discussing philosophy? If the best Rand
>> > could do was cognitive science, then apparently there is no philosophy
>> > to discuss.
.
>> Yeah, let's give philosophy back some of that ol' time religion.
.
>No, on this one point I agree with Mal. But he is wrong (of course) in
>every other respect.
.
>Rand wasn't doing "cognitive science". She may have referenced it from
>time to time for the purpose of illustration. But the "science" if you
>will is entirely irrelevant to the fundamental points she is making.
>Science isn't needed to validate logic or to support the "validity of
>perception" or the basis of ethics, etc. Those are philosophical and
>universal questions, true in all times and place.
.
>It also isn't needed to validate (or invalidate) Rand's view of
>concept formation. Her point - and breakthrough - was entirely
>philosophical and logical, i.e.this is the way concepts HAVE TO be
>formed for the process to make any sense. Science, per se, has nothing
>to say on the subject. (Theoretically, the Greeks - in time - could
>have discovered her theory and her theory will be as true a million
>years from now, whatever the progress of science, as it is now).

This paragraph from ITOE 29 tells the whole story:

'On the lower levels of awareness, a complex neurological process is
required to enable man to experience a sensation and to integrate
sensations into percepts; that process is automatic and
non-volitional: man is aware of its results, but not of the process
itself. On the higher, conceptual level, the process is psychological,
conscious and volitional.'

There you have ITOE in a nutshell: neurology and psychology.

Reading further along in that chapter I see nothing more than
psychology. You can't judge a book by its cover -- or its title.

Furthermore, you are assuming, without looking beyond the holy script
into other authors' works published at around the time the articles
constituting ITOE were published, that Rand wrote the only book on
the subject in the whole world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bruner

'"To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to
learn is to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize."
Bruner maintains people interpret the world in terms of its
similarities and differences.'

But he took it one intelligent step further than Rand:

'Jerome Bruner argues that the cognitive revolution, with its current
fixation on mind as "information processor," has led psychology away
from the deeper objective of understanding mind as a creator of
meanings. Only by breaking out of the limitations imposed by a
computational model of mind can we grasp the special interaction
through which mind both constitutes and is constituted by culture.'

Remember what I wrote about Rand's use of geek computerese language
('data of the senses'). Rand had adopted the computational model of
the mind typical of that era of psychological theory.

Rand's ITOE was part of a "cognitive revolution" that, according to
the Wiki article cited, "erupted" around 1956. As I said, she read
some books on the subject before writing the articles constituting
ITOE. But I doubt that she ever read Bruner's or else she might have
changed her tone from "computerese" to something vaguely more
human. But she definitely read some.

For example, "As a working definition we may say a concept exists
whenever two or more distinguishable objects have been grouped or
classified together and set apart from other objects on the basis of
some common feature or property characteristic of each."
(Lyle E. Bourne, "Human Conceptual Behavior," 1966)

Conceptual behavior, by the way, is a cognitive science topic, not
epistemology.
--
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