From: jwales@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (jimmy donal wales)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Request for critiques of Objectivism, and for intro's to philosophy
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:13:02 GMT
Organization: Indiana University

First, I would like to thank Randall Holmes for his letter.  He appears
to be the sort of person one can have a discussion with!  Many opponents
of Objectivist positions express dismay at 'Randroids', people who appear
to have simply memorized Rand's philosophy without comprehension of it
or of possible objections.  I understand their objection; it is sometimes
valid.

But remember that we see a lot of it from this side, too!  How many
times do I see people rablidly denouncing Rand with no apparent understanding
of her philosophy.

But Randall Holmes's approach is the correct one.  He states certain
things which he disagrees with in Rand's view, and expresses a willingness
to think about them.  I think that this is the essence of valid
philosophical debate.

>For instance, her insistence on rejecting
>physical determinism is ill-advised; she makes the common error that
>physical determinism is incompatible with moral choice, which it is
>not.  

Actually, you are mistaken on Rand's view of physical determinism.
Her view is that metaphysics and physics are different subjects.  In
the recently published 'dialogues' (at the end of _Introduction to
Objectivist Epistemology_) Rand is very careful to separate the two.

In particular, she certainly does _not_ make the claim that physical
determinism is incompatible with moral choice and therefore false.
Such a claim would, as you note, invert the heirarchy of metaphysics,
epistemology and ethics.

(On to the law of identity)
>Rand seems to use it to say "Each thing has an
>essential nature and has to have the properties which follow from that
>nature". 

This is a slightly inaccurate phrasing, but not horribly so.  For Rand,
the nature of a thing _is_ the properties of the thing.  
Whatever a thing is, that is what it is, and not something else.  For
Rand, essences are epistemological, not metaphysical.

>Proposition:  The Objector is an adherent of the forces of Evil -- he
>denies the Law of Identity, Man is Man, from which we deduce that
>George, being a man, must have property X, which belongs to man's
>essential nature.

Whoa!  This line demonstrates a misunderstanding of Rand's epistemology.
For example, Rand defines MAN as 'the rational animal'.  But this does
not mean that each individual man is some kind of combination of rationality
and animality.  Each person is, metaphysically, whatever that person is.
The discovery that 'rationality' (in the sense: capability to reason) and
'animality' are the fundamental characteristics (meaning: explaining the
most about all of the attributes of the referents of the concept in the
appropriate context) is epistemological.

Rand's view of concept formation is one of 'measurement omission'.
The basic idea is that of observing similarities and differences,
regarding each entity as a member of a group, integrating the group
into a conceptual whole, and finding essential characteristics which
serve to best define the concept.

I beleive the above summary of Rand's position to be accurate for the
most part.  But I have to warn everyone that I wrote it off the top
of my head.  The best source is, of course, Rand herself.

--Jimbo
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta