[MD] Objectivism and the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Hi Laramie --

> Thanks for the explanation.  Starting to suspect you and
> Bensinger are competing to see who can store the most
> words in the MD archives.

If that's a criticism, I take it to mean either that 1) my posts are running
longer than most, or 2) my vocabularly is larger than most.  I don't know
about Arlo, but I plead "not guilty" on both counts.

> Enjoyed reading "The Value Connection".

Good.  You'll note that it addresses most of the points I discussed in my
response to your question about Value.

Incidentally, in an effort to prompt a more extensive comparison of
Objectivism vs. Essentialism and the MoQ, I used my Barnes & Noble gift card
today to purchase Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology."  The
front cover says: "Contains extensive never-before-published philosophical
material by Ayn Rand," but since it was edited by Harry Binswanger and
Leonard Peikoff, I still can't be sure how much of it is Rand's own thought.

It says in Chapter 5: Definitions (quoting from p. 52 of my softback copy)
...

"Aristotle regarded 'essence' as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as
epistemological.  [This is a faulty comparison.  Regardless of its
"essence", reality is metaphysical; epistemology is how we are aware of
reality.]

"Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental
characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other
characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other
existents within the field of man's knowledge."

[Compare that with Aristotle's definition of essence as "the one common
characteristic that all things belonging to a particular category have in
common and without which they could not be members of that category," and
you'll see that the Randian formulation is based directly on Aristotle's.
What isn't clear in her definition is the meaning of the word "concept",
which is not an objective entity.  Is she defining Essence or only the
"concept of Essence"?]

She also says:

"An essential characteristic is factual, in the sense that it does exist,
does determine other characteristics and does distinguish a group of
existents from all others; it is epistemological  in the sense that the
classification of "essential characteristic" is a device of man's method of
cognition -- a means of classifying, condensing and integrating an
ever-growing body of knowledge."

Rand then defines the "extreme realist (Platonist)", "moderate realist
(Aristotelian)", and "extreme nominalist (contemporary)" schools of thought
regarding concepts.  [I disagree that Plato was an extreme, or even
moderate, realist.]  But look what she says about the Platonists:

"To compound the chaos; it must be noted that the Platonist school begins by
accepting the primacy of consciousness, by reversing the relation of
consciousness to existence, by assuming that reality must conform to the
content of consciousness, not the other way around -- on the premise that
the presence of any notion in man's mind proves the existence of a
corresponding referent in reality.  But the Platonist school still retains
some vestige of respect for reality, if only in unstated motivation: it
distorts reality into a mystical concept in order to extort its sanction and
validate subjectivism."

How can this understanding of Platonism possibly be defined as "extreme
realism" when it is pure idealism?  It's one thing to refuse to acknowledge
idealism (the word doesn't appear in the book), but Rand or her editors have
misconstrued it as realism.  I find this incredulous.  What do you think?

If this comparative analysis is of any interest to you, I'll continue it
after I've digested more of Rand's epistemology.

Essentially yours,
Ham