I regret to inform the team that Ayn Rand is not part of Harold Bloom’s Western Canon.
http://www.literarycritic.com/bloom.htm
Nor is M. Scott Peck, Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), J.R.R. Tolkien, Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind), or Dale Carnegie.
The Bible makes the cut.
Hm. Hypocrites. Rings a bell. Vaguely.
From the reviews on the web, I think I would like it. Weber’s The Hypocrites (1915) is available on video and reportedly compares well with D.W. Griffith’s work by the same name (which I haven’t seen either).
If it’s not too much to ask Lib (and it may be), I would be interested in your views of both films. (This assumes that D.W. Griffith’s work is available on video).
They’re very similar.
Both are preachy allegories of the authors’ religious views, and both involve drawing parallels between historical periods and the then modern day. Weber’s film mixes them up, though, and Griffith’s cuts between them. The influence of Weber on Griffith (and a whole slew of other directors, like John Ford) is unmistakable. For example, in Intolerence, Griffith uses the same time-lapse photography technique that Weber pioneered. Simply from the perspective that hers is original innovation, and she is the one who influenced others, I’ve assigned her film as more “important”.
As you’ll see in the thread, importance is determined by three criteria: innovation, influence, and controversy. Innovation involves a director’s trail-blazing technical mastery, influence is a measure of the film’s impact on filmmaking, and controversy is a reflection of the film’s impact on society. All those make Weber’s film more important than Griffith’s. You don’t really have to see either of them to deduce that.
JThunder
If academic philosophy majors cannot be counted on as an authority on philosophy, then I am at a loss to wonder about this entire conversation, and whether anyone here rejects Rand on any standard whatsoever.
So when you read Hume, do you come to it with Descartes on the brain? Did you learn about existence from Descartes, or did you learn about what Descartes thought he knew about existence? I don’t ask this to be rude, I ask this because many of these philosophers are diametrically opposed on many topics. Many topics, in fact, that they woul dhave considered to be of fundamental importance. I ask you this because I can find an academic philosopher (as I define them) which can critique some point or other of all of these men. Which makes them all at least partially wrong.
And then I would ask, even if they were wrong, can they still contribute to philosophy in their wrongness? I cannot say that any two philosophers can both be correct. I can say that if I accept their premises, then most of their conclusions follow. If I ignore Hume’s epistemological concerns and limits, I can understand a rationalist like Descartes. If I discount Descartes, I can follow Hume.
But every critique of Rand I have found attacks Rand based on other philosopher’s (or philosophers’) works! Which is fine, of course, if you think that (for example) Hume was absolutely right, or at least, was never wrong. But I cannot even follow Kant unless I am willing to discount Hume. I cannot follow Russell’s conception of positivism unless I am willing to discount all sorts of empiricists and rationalits alike.
People say Rand abused and misuderstood the problem of universals. Her point about universals were that they were an epistemological distinction used to understand ontological truths about objective reality. She directly said that caution should be used in such talk, because it would be haphazard thinking to automatically grant metaphysical existence to universals based on our (human) methods of gaining knowledge. Wittgenstein would say (if he agreed with Rand) that the question “Does length exist?” that the question was not well-formed. By the time we come to ask whether length exists we have already used our conception of length to understand other things. I rely on L.W. a lot because, as I say, he is currently my favorite philosopher. But apart from his bold (and deliberately non-sensical) assertions in the Tractutus, he said many things which I have also found to be true in my own ponderings. And, as a philosopher (by my understanding of philosophers) he has elucidated many things which I have already known but never formalized or expressed clearly. But Rand has as well. The only way Rand did that was by coming to Rand as I would come to any other philosopher: with as open of a mind as I can, and with as little preconception of things as I could.
Did I just not understand Hume because I know that causality is a fact? Or was Hume just wrong? Hume might be one of the greatest contributers to the philosophy of science for his musings on inductive learning and its inherent incompleteness. So if I reject Hume, am I forced to also reject science? If I reject Kant, am I forced to reject deontological morality? If i accept deontological morality, must have I of done so because of Kant?
I appreciate your list, Lamia, though I remain unclear on why these people specifically warrant speedy or necessary mention. Do they warrant mention because you feel they were all right? That they represent a historical progression of philosophical thought?
Spinoza is no academic philosopher by your previous discussion, and I thought Hume was very readable. I’ve heard Kant was terribly dry, but I haven’t gotten to him yet. Descartes wasn’t impossible to read, and neither was Hobbes (though I note with interest he didn’t make this list). I would definitely call these works accessible provided one has a passing interest in philosophy in the first place.
But of course, that requires that you believe I already can understand these gentlemen, which you have implied I do not or have not understood them. Is it because I mischaracterize arguments, or because I disagree with long-standing historical traditions?
I will say it: there is no knowledge that can be gained independent of experience. I am prepared to defend that statement against any assault you care to mount. I always thought the notion of a priori knowledge was murky, but Rand’s ideas clarified them for me. I said this earlier in the thread, and I suspect it is far more appropriate to mention now. In disagreeing with philosophers one often finds themselves being accused of not understanding the concepts. I say this not as a dig on philosophers per se, but as a statement of fact that people who agree with certain philosophers on some subject think that it is because they have developed a point greatly.
Though I call Rand an immanent realist, I do so because she talks just like one, with the only exception being she doesn’t grant the same existence to universals as she does to the objects which have those universals. She does so because she doesn’t wish to make the ontological assertion based on our method of cognition. I think that is a fair call. As far as I can tell she didn’t misunderstand the problem. I believe she feels that universals exist in the same way that “left” exists. A cube does not have a “leftness” to it, though we understand things like “the left side of the cube is white.”
Some would question whether it is valid to distinguish ontological objects yet know them epistemologically; that is, if whiteness (or length or hardness) doesn’t exist, then how can we distinguish them in the first place, which is to say, how are our conepts valid?
Which almost seems like a legitimate question, right up until you see that in order to reject our concepts, we must have concepts in the first place with which to judge the others, and if we came to understand the concept this (the ultimate ontological quantifier of identity) only after differentiating objects based on our perception, then there is no way to reject, wholesale, our method of cognition. To do so undermines the very argument used to undermine cognition and is an absurdity.
Some would like to say that we know smoething if our belief of something corresponds to external reality. This is the definition of a fact I encounter most often. But the second clause of the definition requires standards of measurement and judgement, which is to say, a whole slew of concepts, at the base of which stands, unshaken even by contrary evidence, that we can understand the world in the first place. To Rand, a concept is a reference to a class of objects with specific measurements omitted, whatever can be omitted. A philosopher keen on looking for “manness” in men, like Aristotle, or like other immanent realists, would then try to seperate qualities a man had but didn’t need to have in order to be called a man, from qualities one needs to be considered, rightly, a man. This sort of follows smoothly from the existence of universals in their own right (even if they can only exist in discrete objects). But Rand said that this was not the case: everything we have abstracted went into our concept. There are no “unnecessary” qualities. All qualities we perceived created (and continue to affect) our concept of “man”. They are thus all necessary because they all contributed to our concept (all of my experience with men goes into my concept of “man”).
And it must be remembered that this is an empistemological distinction based on our method of perception, not an assertoric statement about the existence or non-existence of universals! The problem of universals exists (to Rand) only because people are trying to understand their concepts by breaking them down. But the concept, as a unit, is not formed solely through integration of experience and not solely though differentiation of experience, and so though it can be dissected into parts, those parts are either integrated and differentiated on their own, they are atomic concepts, or they no longer make much sense. Whiteness, per se, is a universal. It is a concept of the concept of color. We may break our concept of color up to examine what differentiates white from blue. But before we could even have white or blue we needed a sort of container concept—the integration—of color. And color came as a differentiation (something I perceive here that is now what I perceive there) and an integration (though these are both similar in some other respect). Each new color I learn or see (sepia) not only adds itself to the container concept, but adjusts the concept of the container itself.
At least, that is what a reasonable person would do (according to Rand), but it is possible to evade our own method of cognition. The evasion consists of consciously refusing to integrate or differentiate new experiences as they come, to insist, for example, that once I have a concept of color it is what it is and it is right or wrong (it is a fact) and that’s that.
So when we ask a question like, “Does color exist?” we must try and take apart our container, and we find perception at its root. You’ll note a distinct notion of phenomenology here, only without the messiness of trying to talk beyond it and saying that we can know nothing about things in themselves because we had to perceive in the first place. If all there is is perception, and we clearly exist (in some capacity or other), then it seems a rather large leap of logic to say that we can or cannot know anything beyond our senses. Our senses are how we know in the first place! Which is to say, by the time we reach a reading of works of a phenomenologist or two, he might ask us to consider that our senses are not telling us anything about reality per se, that our senses are a limit, no, not a limit, a shield which prevents us from accessing reality “as it exists”. But where does this assertion come from, and once it is made, what has it done to all the concepts that went into it in the first place? If you wish to invalidate our entire conception of existence with a sweep of the hand, how can you say that anything is “as it exists”? What the heck does that even mean?
It almost isn’t the question, to Rand, of whether or not we can know about reality through our senses, but that to know anything we must use our senses, so any other question is (to use Wittenstein again) not well-formed in the first place. If we have a concept of knowledge at all, we must have gotten it through a series of integration and differentiation on percepts. There is no sense in which we can uproot that.
Which isn’t to say we cannot be mistaken. But when we recognize a mistake, we do so through cognition as well, specifically through perception. Suppose I were looking for my keys in the morning and I ckeck my pants pocket only to find it empty. I set the pants down, light a cigarette, wait for a minute, and then check again in the same pocket. This is a direct application of saying that I can never know with certainty empirical facts.
Does anyone do this that we consider, as a society, to be mentally healthy?
And Rand, in saying that there is an objective reality, that we know reality because it is all there is to know, allows you philosophically to put your pants down and check over by your bedroom dresser. Keys do not simply vanish and then reappear. This is the application of your concept of “existence” and “keys” and all sort of other things to volitional behavior. This is how your senses indicate things, there is no obvious evidence to the contrary, and we all behave that way, and this is how our language works, and so on.
Pardon me for saying it again, but I would consider that a contribution. If any philosopher anywhere has contributed anything, I think we must accept that Rand did as well.
Unless, again, I am misunderstanding everything.
—I’ve heard Kant was terribly dry, but I haven’t gotten to him yet.—
Kant is not so much dry as he is very stingy with his use of periods. Perhaps there are translations of him that remedy this, but I find the main problem in reading him is not that what he is saying is dry and uncompelling, but rather that it sometimes takes him a page or so before he finishes a complete thought.
Amen. As an example from Critique of Pure Reason, I’ll embolden his point:
Amen to that. Back when I was taking Intro to Early Modern Philosophy, we always had to write a summary of the day’s assigned reading for our homework. Pages and pages of Kant often ended up being reduced to three sentences.
But no philosopher ever made me wish for an improved translation more than Locke. . .and I’m a native English speaker.
Once again though, you are misrepresenting my statement. Gravely misrepresenting it, in fact.
I’m not saying that you can’t count on philosophy majors as authorities. They are not, however, a monolithic group with equal qualfications and attention to detail. That is why merely having a doctorate does not make one’s word definitive. This is ESPECIALLY true in fields like Philosophy, where different Ph.D.'s often espouse mutually exclusive (and sometimes self-refuting!) views.
And for the third time, I’d like to remind you that there’s a huge difference between saying “I take Ayn Rand seriously” and “I think that Ayn Rand’s views have merit, and constitute valid contributions to philosophy.”
Once again, if you are going to defend the eminence of Ayn Rand’s work, I think you need a much stronger defense than just “Well, there are some Ph.D.'s out there who take her seriously.”
Why is that defense any weaker than the offense that there are some Ph.D.'s who don’t?
Well, JThunder, given two of my monsterous posts on objectivism, the number of PhD philosophers mentioned, and the various interpretations of what it means to contribute to philosophy, I think I have made as decent of a case as can be had on a message board barring actual responses to my case which are few and far between.
I don’t agree with Rand on the subject of universals. I am definitely an immanent realist. I don’t agree with Rand on the nature of objective reality, which is to say, I don’t agree that objective systems of judgement necessarily correspond to objective ontological existents. But I think she presented her views well enough, I think they are more or less internally consistent if we accept her premises, and I think that she deserves merit based on that alone. Like Lib, I also agree that she isn’t a fantastic example of a philosopher. I am not aware of why Lib feels so exactly, but for me it is because I do not feel she devoted enough effort into fleshing out her system and left it for others to do, which has since created two seperate schools of objectivism, one spearheaded (now) by Binswanger and the other by Kelley, and from what I have read of both of them they both find support from Rand’s statements in their interpretations of it.
I find it to be both a reasonable system in that it does serve to explain human behavior and certainly seems to support how scientific and semantic conventions come about, rather than esoteric commentaries on the impossibility of certain types of knowledge (why you would call impossible knowledge “knowledge” yet eludes me, but that is ok if that is what you want to do). That’s why I don’t think Rand was a navel-gazer, and that’s why I said she wanted people’s heads out of the clouds. I don’t say that because I think she was simplistic.
And, what Lib said. If some people have presented the argument that academic philosophers don’t like Rand, I presented some who do. Then the counter-assertion would be that they aren’t true scotsman—I mean, true academic philosophers—or that support of academic philosophers are not a sufficient condition for contributing to philosophy, and here are additional criteria etc., which you, erl have failed to meet.
I have no problem being wrong. In some respects it would be nice to be wrong, as I’ve previously mentioned. I do not believe I am wrong; hence, pages two through four of this debate.
I am astounded that you’re saying that. In this very forum, we have people criticizing Rand’s work on entirely different bases – her erroneous, strawman definition of “altruism,” for example, and her pathetic caricatures of communist and capitalist societies.
Rand, in saying that there is an objective reality – and making such a big deal of it – is regurgitating a tired, well-established concept that has existed for centuries. By itself, there’s nothing wrong with that. To proclaim this as the lynchpin of her so-called “philosophy” though – even going so far as to name her worldview “Objectivism” – merely demonstrates the shallowness of her alleged philosophizing.
Shallowness? I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen a more shallow, superficial, and ill-informed understanding of Rand’s metaphysic. It reminds me of Em Griffin’s take on her ethic:
There is not one molecule of comprehension of Objectivism’s ethic in Griffin’s monumentally irrelevant interpretation.
And “strawman definition of ‘altruism,’”? It’s like talking about Kant’s strawman definition of “synthetic”. Just simply weird.
And I am suggesting she made contributions elsewhere.
There is nothing in this statement with which to validate your opinion. As long as my understanding of concepts is not given the benefit of the doubt, I will not grant the same to my opponents; and, furthermore, since I have actually presented the case, I will expect my opponents to do so.
Eris
You are morphing into Spiritus right before our eyes! 
Well, hey, someone has to try to take up the slack he left behind. I have spoken with him, FWIW, and everything is ok on his end. He’s just in a non-SDMB phase. I think we can all relate. 
It’s good to hear that he’s okay. There is no intellect that I respect more than his. I hope we hear from him soon.