You Tube update: Anne Wortham video back online & cool science-music videos

Dr. Anne Wortham's video is back up on YouTube. You can check it out here and the conversation that ensued last time I brought it up.

Also I ran across these science-themed movie videos which I thought were rather cool and inspiring. Enjoy!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk

Why I'm an Objectivist

Well, I guess that Ayn Rand's books are experiencing a surge of interest due to the economic crisis. But amidst all the pundits weighing in on one side or the other, I'd simply like to talk about why I'm an Objectivist.

A lot of people point out that Greenspan was an Objectivist (he even wrote several of the essays in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). But the policies and decisions he pursued in his career make him anything but. How can the chief of the Fed, who sits in unilateral judgment over the arbitrary outlay of interest rates and the monetary supply, possibly be supportive of the government deregulation of the financial system? No, Greenspan isn't an Objectivist.

A lot of people get hung up on that deal with the Brandens, or with the Peikoff-Kelley split. The former is a sideshow bearing no relevance to Ayn Rand's philosophical ideas. It is akin to discrediting the Declaration of Independence because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Somebody can make mistakes in character judgment, or bad choices and still have good ideas. That's why there is a logical fallacy devoted to just such an error, ad hominem (meaning against the man). The latter focuses on a very relevant issue, the proper moral response to dissent. I'm honestly not sure which side is correct in their assessments, as I've recently stated, I'm not sure myself how to properly discern between evasion and deception and whether or not there should morally be a different response for the two, or if they deserve to be lumped together. This jury of one is still out on that subject, and until I reach a verdict, I will be hesitant to condemn either side unilaterally. After all, error is a very real occurrence. To deny the capacity for error is to assert that we are all granted a priori knowledge of the universe, an assertion closer to the philosophy of Plato than that of Rand. And I don't believe in patently accepting orthodoxy from any source if I don't fully understand the principles involved.

Some people assert that Rand has a utilitarian value, that she provides the moral justification for capitalism. Well, she does. But that isn't a reason to believe in Objectivism. The only viable reason to believe in Objectivism is this: is it true?

To ask this question of most philosophies is to encounter a Cartesian loop of circular reasoning. Most philosophies demand that you accept either a God, or social force, or some vague and inexplicable internal sense as the final arbiter of morality. Only Rand came forth to say that what is moral is based solidly in the tangible reality and tangible demands of our physical existence. The reason philosophers scoff at Objectivism is because it is fully comprehensible. The reason why it isn't taken seriously is because it does not rest on a leap of faith, a "feeling" that something is right or wrong. It rests on reason. Philosophers have spent generations arguing about whether they can know that reality exists, how they can know anything if they can't assume anything about existence, endless wormholes of uncertainty and referenceless abstractions based on clouds of air where they simply try to rationalize their own assumptions about morality by any means necessary. There is a very real reason why we tend to think of something as "deep" which is completely incomprehensible or bizarre. It is because what many of our philosophers have presented to us as deep and fundamental truths of existence have in fact been nothing more than incomprehensible or bizarre all along.

Rand was the first one in modern history to come out and say "The Emperor has no clothes...and this is why." She stated that some assumptions are necessary, that they are in fact assumed by anyone who would attempt to disprove them: Existence exists, Consciousness is conscious, A thing is itself (A is A). Her philosophical system anticipated significant developments in cognitive science (such as the embodiment of cognitive experience and the necessity for a hierarchy of concept formation for information processing) and linguistics (such as examining the concealment of agency realized by transitivity and passivization as a technique for encoding hidden ideology). Objectivism has ramifications for economics, political science, morality, law, and education. All of these fields are traditionally presented to us as decontextualized, incomprehensible forces of nature to which we must simply react, but can never hope to comprehend or to influence.

Objectivism makes explicit the underlying mechanisms of all of these processes and shows how we are the center of all of these systems, that we are not just passive receivers of some arbitrary destiny; that we have the power and indeed, the responsibility, to act upon those systems to make them better for our own sakes. And that by working to make these systems more productive objectively, that by striving to attain our own individual rational self-interest, by seeking to attain the best that life has to offer over the entire span of one's life, that the net result is an immeasurable benefit for everyone. But that the justification is not in the benefit to all but in the benefit to one's self. That we are born into this life as ourselves, that we experience only the life that we have as ourselves, and that the pursuit of happiness is not a pragmatic end, but a moral pursuit in and of itself.

Objectivism offers HAPPINESS, whereas the other varied philosophies and ideologies of our age only demand SACRIFICE. Sacrifice to what? For whose benefit? Will my children be the happier for me having sacrificed their economic well-being today? Will I truly have any greater guarantee of security by demanding that they pay for my retirement, when in fact the economic necessities of the system will mean that social security will most likely not even exist by that time? Will they be the better educated by demanding that they be constrained to the lowest common denominator of educational quality made possible by averaging the resources of the community as opposed to what I could provide for them unfettered by the economic burdens imposed by the government? No. No. No.

Opponents of Objectivism need to make an explicit stand, one that they cannot ultimately justify and thus why they always resort to ad hominem attacks or dodge the issue. Objectivism ultimately stands for the rational pursuit of your happiness over the span of your life. It holds that as a moral virtue, the highest moral goal. To say that Objectivism is evil, is to say that the pursuit of happiness is evil. To say that Objectivism is wrong, is to say that it is wrong to be happy, it is wrong to want the best for your children, it is wrong to receive greater pay for greater work, that any attempts to advance your position in life is evil and the most we can hope for in our imperfect lives is to beg for the mercy of those who hold incontrovertible power over us, whether they be thrust into that position by design or the vagaries of the political process.

I refute this view of life. I cannot accept that I was born to be the tool of others, that I was born to be used, manipulated, milked of whatever capacity I have and then to be cast aside with the fruits of my productivity to be dispensed according to the whims of a lunatic mob. I believe in the principles that America was founded upon. I believe in this nation of principles, the only nation ever founded by philosophers. What Ayn Rand represents is not a radical divergence from American values, she represents the soul of American virtue unabashedly claiming its rightful distinction as the only moral system which does not treat humanity as sacrifical animals to be slaughtered for the sake of anyone's whims, whether they be the dreams of one man, or the dreams of us all. This virtue can only be fully realized if we accept the objective basis of morality, the objective determinants of justice and just law.

And the final reason that I am an objectivist is not just because the logical arguments makes sense to me, but that I can see the principles that Objectivism makes clear in operation in every aspect of life around me. When I see the way people react to politics, or economics, or education. When I see the things that are easy to teach or are easy to learn. The more I discover about the processes of the human mind, and society. Everything that I learn from science and my experience with other human beings in society. Everything makes sense when viewed from an Objectivist perspective. Where before, there was only a chaos of competing voices all crying for power, all crying for pity, all teetering on an uncertain foundation rocking on the waves of public opinion, I have now come to see the levers which operate those systems, and to understand the motivations driving the forces in our society. When I see the accuracy with which the themes in Ayn Rand's works play out in the news around me and even in my own personal life, I cannot refute the predictive power of her model. No other philosophy I have studied has come anywhere near as close in terms of precise clarity and comprehensive explanatory power.

And that is why I am an Objectivist. If I were to find a proof, whether it be logical or practical which invalidated the propositions of Objectivism, I would surrender the title of Objectivist and set about constructing a revised philosophy incorporating that proof. But I haven't yet. Despite all the ranting on the internet. Despite all the spite and condemnations of Rand's work. Despite all the insults and some outright lies. Not a single detractor has been able to provide a significant counter-argument. So I ask openly: if you (anybody out there at all) have an objection, bring it forth. Let's talk about this here and now. If you can show me the error of my ways, then do so. But I only ask one thing in return. That if your arguments prove to be the weaker, will you be as willing to change your views? If you are, then you're probably closer to being an Objectivist than you may think.

Ayn Rand vs. Philosophy in the Flesh: Part 1 Metaphysical Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth

I've just started reading a 1999 book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson entitled "Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought". The reviews claim that it "radically changes the tenets of traditional western philosophy." Needless to say, this caught my eye. Given the plague of contradictions in most contemporary philosophy, anything which claims to challenge them warrants examination.

This isn't my first foray into Lakoff and Johnson. I had to write a paper on the use of figurative language in translation for my MA in Applied Linguistics. As part of my research on the nature of metaphor I came across the earlier work by Lakoff & Johnson, "Metaphors We Live By". I had to say that the concept was interesting, the idea that metaphors are primarily derived from biological experience, e.g. that Descartes dualism was bunk and that our minds and bodies are an integrated unit. However, I found some of the later conclusions they drew from this argument to be rather sloppy. I ended up using more of Kovesces' work in the final write-up.

What tickled my interest though was the concept of the embodied mind. This is something which Ayn Rand was villified for by the philosophers of her day, embodied objectivism. So, I find it interesting that cognitive science is now producing ideas which seem to echo theories suggested by Rand. As the authors of this volume claim that their "embodied" philosophy "offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is", I was interested to see how much these understandings differ from those of Rand. Unfortunately they left her out of their list of philosophies to criticize. So, I've decided that, as time allows, I will analyze their arguments from an Objectivist point of view and see where they're the same, where they're different, and which is left standing.

PART ONE: Metaphysical Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth

Well, I hadn't hit page 26 before I found myself hitting the Ayn Rand Lexicon and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to double-check definitions.

I don't think L&J's definitions of cognition or the cognitive unconscious are too problematic. Instead they seem highly compatible with Rand's assertion that concepts are subsumed into the unconscious and guide our thought automatically at a certain level of operation. Until a concept has been integrated into one's consciousness, that concept will only appear in the conscious mind. However, once it has been integrated into one's value system, it becomes a part of one's functional unconscious.

Where we start to see some conflict is when they start to take on two issues, metaphysical realism and the correspondence theory of truth. Now, I realize that they didn't have Objectivism in mind when they were writing their book, but if Objectivism has answers to their problems, then they haven't succeeded in doing away with these fundamental philosophical concepts.
Metaphysical realism, by the way, is basically the assertion that the world is as it is independent of our minds. That is to say, that it doesn't matter what I may feel about the matter, that either there is a puppy licking my feet or there isn't. Period. I may be crazy. There may not be a puppy licking my feet. But if there isn't then there are ways of testing reality to determine whether or not there is, indeed, a puppy there. Reality is. Existence exists. The assumption of a common reality is primary to any attempt to use language. Teaching language would be impossible without it. Just imagine trying to explain "tree" to someone who doesn't know English and has never seen one before. You would probably have to resort to showing a picture, exotic gestures, or perhaps driving them out to a forest. You couldn't explain "tree" disconnected from a common experience of reality.

Nevertheless, this is the first concept that L&J attempt to take on. So, let's look at what they offer.

Their first offering is the color problem. They suggest that "human concepts are not just reflections of an external reality, but they are crucially shaped by our bodies and brains, especially by our sensorimotor system."

Intitially they offer nothing new: that color does not exist as such beyond wavelengths of light at various frequencies, or "electromagnetic radiation" for a more technical term. What we call "color" is how our brains interpret these wavelengths. They further argue that if our concepts of color are directly derived from our interpretation of the properties of light reflected from surfaces then our categorizations of color concepts would reflect the categories of reflectance. They proceed to point out that our concept of color has an internal structure in that some colors are focal. (That is to say that what we consider really really red, would be the central red, and more derivative forms of red may be thinks that are purplish red or orange red, etc.) The problem is that the actual categories of reflectance do not mirror this structure, so this means that our concept of color is "inextricably tied to our embodiment".

Rephrasing, they say that "color concepts are "interactional"; they arise from the interactions of our bodies, our brains, the reflective properties of objects, and electromagnetic radiation."

So far so good, I think. Rand says, "Sensations are the primary material of consciousness and, therefore, cannot be communicated by means of the material which is derived from them. The existential causes of sensations can be described and defined in conceptual terms (e.g., the wavelengths of light and the structure of the human eye, which produce the sensations of color), but one cannot communicate what color is like, to a person who is born blind. To define the meaning of the concept "blue", for instance, one must point to some blue objects to signify, in effect: "I mean this." (Intro to Objectivist Epistemology 52).

L&J then think they have struck gold when they declare that colors are not objective (that colors do not exist independently of the observer) and that they are not purely subjective (colors are not hallucinations). From this they claim that metaphysical realism fails, that color only makes sense in terms of an "embodied realism".

There are a couple problems here. First, colors are not objective, because they are not objects. Metaphysical realism, at least that as maintained by Objectivism does not claim that colors are objective, divorced from a human body.

"You are an indivisible entitiy of matter and consciousness. Renounce your consciousness and you become a brute. Renounce your body and you become a fake. Renounce the material world and you surrender it to evil." (For The New Intellectual, 142).

On the contrary, Rand singles out color as a sensation. Sensations can only ever be defined ostensibly. Taste would fit in this category as well. If you doubt this, simply ask a Japanese person to try and explain "shibui" to you. You can't possibly understand until you've experienced it. But even then, taste in and of itself is not an object in reality. It is a sensation generated by our brains in response to the operations of an object's properties upon our sensorimotor system. L&J claim the sky is not reflective, because it is not an object. No, but it is an array of objects which have a cumulative effect. The calculus of their objective properties invoke the stimulus which triggers our brains to recognize the day-time sky as blue. That "blueness" is only a function of how our brains perceive that stimulus does nothing to undermine the objective existence of that stimulus. Thus I think that metaphysical realism is nicely in tact. (One hopes that this isn't too terribly fundamental to L&J's argument, else it's already undone on page 25.)

Uh, oh! Turn the page and all of a sudden they're demanding that we give up the correspondence theory of truth. They state that if color isn't a metaphysical "primary quality" as defined by Locke, then we must give up on the idea that "truth lies in the relationship between words and the metaphysically and objectively real world external to any perceiver." This is an addition of L&J's and a misstep of many philosophers. Truth does not lie in the relationship between words and reality. "Truth is the identification of a fact of reality" (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 150.)

They states that a sentence like "Blood is red" cannot be true if red doesn't have objective truth value. But the statement does have objective truth value...in a given context. Context is everything. Blood is not red, unless exposed to air. But in that case it is. What they ignore here is that we have an understanding of what it means for something to be red, even if it is an embodied reaction to sensory stimulus. We have a knowledge of what blood is. Blood is an objective existent. It is an object and has certain properties specific to it. Some of these properties have the effect of triggering a response in our brains that assigns to it the color red. These are all facts encapsulated in the statement "Blood is red". And there is no denying them. But once again, it depends on context.

Isolated sentences never appear in nature, they are the province of philosophers. Especially those who like to take advantage of disassociated context to manipulate the natural ambiguity of language. However, this ambiguity disappears when attention is paid to the context of an utterance within a stream of discourse. Discourse contextualizes utterances so that it is possible for them to have a truth value. Every utterance does have a specific meaning in a given context. It is only by creating unnatural representations of language that the truth value of any given statement can be called into question. Context is everything.

Well, that's all I have for now, but I look forward to seeing if they have anything more convincing to come. I hope so, or else I sure wasted my money on this one.