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No. 85
Umm... if I may just butt in? Ad homines to Rand, I believe, are partly justified, as she seemed to exemplify herself as morally upright; that is, in accordance to her own beliefs. She did miserable and alone not because she failed to live up to her expectations but because she put them into practise; Kant, on the other hand, spoke mostly in ideals he claimed would not necessarily work nor be achieved; Rand did not. At least, not in anything of hers that I've read. I might be ('probably am') a dumb-ass, but... just please hear me out.
Objectivism - first of all, how in the world is it even remotely objective? There is nothing demonstrably objective about philosophy; not even the epistemologies of science claim objectivity, only the tendency towards a more truthful perspective; if they did claim objectivity, then new theories wouldn't be possible. But beyond the name, Objectivism holds basically applying Laissez-Faire to ethics, right? More-or-less, a new form of ethical egoism. So, if there are problems with Laissez-faire policies, it should hold true that there's a problem with her objectivism, does that follow? She holds altruism in a negative light, under this idea. But altruism has led to human innovation; I really hate to play evolutionary psychologist, but here, I believe they have right: without altruistic behaviour, there's no reason we would formed social groups to protect each other from harm, develop language to protect each other from harm, shared innovations to protect ourselves from harm, or anything of the sort that allow us to live with what comfort and happiness this life allows. Living completely for ourselves and putting others down for that reason lead to counter-reactions; she held the axiom true that everyone has a right to their own happiness, and, quite frankly, her selfish behaviour in the name of Objectivism led to her dating a relative child already cheating on someone, only to have her lover leave alone.
Unless sacrificial behaviour towards group fitness isn't what she meant by altruism, in which case, what is she arguing against? Acting like a doormat? No one except maybe Comte (who has few to no followers) has ever even remotely suggested that that is what the most moral philosophy is - in which case she seems to be making a dualist assumption against nothing and positioning herself at the opposite extreme for no discernible reason (how does she not hold that simply because it is opposite means it is free of woe, unless she assumes no middle ground and that a side with already known woe to have all woe in the relationship?).
And there's a reason 'the establishment' hasn't held her in too high of an esteem; neither Rand's metaphysics nor her epistemology answer many of the probing questions that philosophers might demand of it. Her metaphysics boil down to clichéd pieties of no utility, no appeal to higher truth, no... appeal to anything other than sounding pretentious. "Existence exists", "Existence is identity", that consciousness is relational, nothing exists without having some properties and the law of identity applies ("A is A"). Okay... how do these arguments answer the questions of even the most minimally trained philosophy student? Just a short example, is Rand's view incompatible with the traditional Aristotelian substance-attribute view of the relationship between particulars and properties? Not to mention her tendencies to shifting meanings solipsistically - what is her definition of identity? It seems to change from just about anything between Leibniz's law of identity of indiscernible and the colloquial meaning ('my identity', usw). Not to mention of Mercy, Reason, Mind, or Evil. Similarly, for Rand's epistemology - she claims that "reason" is the foundation of her epistemology. Despite the label, Rand's epistemology is empiricist. The sort of questions which exercise contemporary epistemologies (to pick a few: resolving Gettier problems, weighing up foundationalism and coherentism as a response to the Agrippan trilemma, the closure principle) are given scant attention in Rand.
Rand claims that all of the elements of her philosophy run together - being an Objectivist means accepting all of the five components of the philosophy. Quite what in the (perfectly acceptable if a little unoriginal) metaphysics and epistemology (reality is all there is, don't bother with religion) necessitates acceptance of the ethics and political philosophy, or indeed the aesthetic worship of railway tycoons and large, phallic buildings, is not explained. The existence of many millions of non-Objectivists who hold without too much of a mental struggle either to a broadly naturalistic metaphysics and epistemology but without the Randian ethic, or to a Randian or libertarian ethic and a non-naturalistic metaphysics (perhaps some kind of religion, orthodox or New Agey) seems to suggest that the two halves of Rand's philosophy aren't bound by necessity.
Then... well, there are all of her conflicts with (mainstream) science. Her claims of empiricism and reason (whether she addressed them by those names or not) were glorified as the same epistemology and metaphysics as Science, but... not true, as put into practice.
Some Objectivists like David Harriman and Leonard Peikoff seem to have a problem with modern physics, especially quantum mechanics due to its probabilistic nature. The breakdown of classical mechanics-style causality at the quantum level doesn't square with Rand's vision of causality. This has led to declarations by Objectivists that modern physics is "corrupted" or "tainted" by a "Kantian influence" and "bad philosophy" in general, in addition to various crank "refutations" of quantum physics and denial of some theories like Relativity Theory (which was Petr Beckmann's specialty). Rand's notion that we can observe reality directly (known in philosophy as direct or naïve realism) is refuted by the current consensus in neuroscience, psychology, and the cognitive sciences (which accepts various forms of indirect or representative realism). In the cognitive sciences, raw input is called "bottom-up perception" and the way the brain interprets this input is called "top-down perception." The visual, auditory, etc. cortices essentially "reconstruct" the input from their respective sense organs, meaning there is always some element of top-down interpretation of raw stimuli. Thus, what we do not experience reality directly but in some sense a perceptual facsimile of reality constructed by the brain. A simple example of this is the fact that the image formed on your eye's retina is upside-down, but the visual cortex flips it right-side up. There are numerous other examples as well, including hallucinations and cognitive illusions. Ayn Rand also expressed doubts about the validity of the theory of evolution. Indeed, while Objectivism itself shares much in common with Social Darwinism, what she didn't like (that is, that according to the evolutionary theory, there is no real difference between human beings and animals, or that it might dilute or downplay personal responsibility) reminds one of other criticisms of evolution. In environmental science, since the magic of the free market can solve any problem, capitalism cannot cause environmental damage. And even if it did, nobody owns the environment, so caring about it would be immoral. Thus, anti-environmentalism is a common position among Randroids and they promote the usual associated pseudoscience and denialism on issues such as DDT, acid rain, and global warming. And of course, of smoking and cancer.
Maybe it's just my view as an "outsider", but... tome, and to many others, it seems Rand's philosophy was nothing more than ethical douchebaggery. Living to that standard led to misery. QED.
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