[MD] Objectivism and the MOQ

[LARAMIE LOEWEN]

Morning, Ham -

More a joke than a criticism - all in good fun.

Yes, amazing how well your "Value Connection" essay related to my 
question.

As for Objectivism and the MoQ, the subject of this thread, as I said -
I don't consider myself an orthodox objectivist, or an authority on her
metaphysics.  However, it does seem that Essentialism endorses the primacy 
of Existence, broadly conceived, as the nothing is a negate of the prior and 
ultimate Essence.  Without Essence, no nothing and no purpose.  

Mostly I admire Rand's ethics and especially aesthetics.  The "Romantic Manifesto" is
one of my favorite books.  I see her ethics as a systematic articulation of how to 
pursue DQ.  And in order to pursue DQ, you need a system that honors individual 
freedom - Capitalism.  Otherwise, anyone who embodies DQ becomes a target for 
genocide, which is how it's always been.    

Continue on, if you like, with your comparative analysis.  I'll be happy to read it.  

Best,
Laramie 


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ham Priday<mailto:hampday1 at verizon.net> 
  To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org<mailto:moq_discuss at moqtalk.org> 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:58 PM
  Subject: Re: [MD] Objectivism and the MOQ



  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

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