Objectivism 101

Davidlg,

I am surprised that as a fellow atheist you are prepared to use terms like "existence" and "truth" with as much carelessness as a deist does.
I challenge you to define either without resorting to circularities. At another level phrases like "the coalition of the killing" make fine emotive rhetoric but are no different in social function from a deist's "manifestation of Satan".

In short, we are stuck with prevailing socio-linguistic paradigms which reflect epistemological positions. Thomas Khun implied that much in his "Structure of Scientific Revolutions". The "progress" you advocate for current thinking is in fact away from naïve realism in which "truth" is central, to a much more subtle approaches to "reality". Consider for example a couple of quotes from Niels Bohr, the father of quantum mechanics (...without which we wouldn't be having these computer communications !).



These quotes illustrate developments post Heisenberg who was mentioned by the previous poster....well said Thalion !

fresco.

Bohr is a Jew, and quite frankly, I don't trust Jews.
As for defining existence and truth....

Existence= that which is.
Truth= any coherent aspect of reality.

""socio-linguistic paradigms which reflect epistemological positions"''....translated as, subjective social agreements based off speculative epistemologies"......trouble is, Objectivist epistemology is fully developed, however, some people are so brainwashed/stoopid, that they reject the self-evident, ie, "reality and their senses"........they do so because celebrity philosophers{many Jewish, eg Ayer} have waged a war against knowledge.

When you question reality, you suggest that another option exists, presumably consciousness being responsible for creating rather than interpreting reality......of course, apart from the nonsense of "quantum world", you have nothing to back your claims, and can prove to yourself that reality is absolute by simply testing it's nature against your destructible body.

FYI, the coalition of the killing are the coalition of the willing.....ie, USA, AUS, ENG.

Your ignorance and your stubbornness (and also apparent racism) make any conversation at all impossible, and continuing this conversation is almost pointless.

Calling truth any coherent aspect of reality implies that you are adopting a coherence theory of truth that is not based on foundational truths but rather on the interrelation between truths. This approach has its benefits, but it does not support the view that you are suggesting of an objective reality because such a reality would exactly constitute a foundation.

Where did Ayer wage a war against logic? In fact, the opinions you have been expressing sound, if anything, more in line with the logical positivists' beliefs in a world of corpuscular facts and the rejection of many of the past great philosophers who alleged only talked "nonsense." Your claim to not trust Bohr, who was one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century and one of the founders of quantum mechanics, shows that you fall into the anti-modern camp that you accuse everyone else of belonging to.

For the last time, I will reiterate that the claim is not that reality does not exist. Only very extreme kinds of liberal post-modernism suggest that reality is not in fact "real." Rather, the contention is that the ability to interpret reality requires certain presuppositions that make completely objective knowledge impossible. There is no scientific "view from nowhere." Your description of knowledge by observing the world constitutes a valid methodology for gaining knowledge, but your contention that that knowledge is self-evidently perfect cannot be founded. In fact, as I previously mentioned, there are numerous mathematical and scientific proofs that illustrate that a finite structure cannot bound the interpretation of its symbols from within. For a literary version of this, read Borges's famous story "The Library of Babel."

It will be a waste of time to again post another message clarifying the issue that a critique of the certainty of knowledge is not necessarily a claim the the limited knowledge that we have does not nonetheless have some pragmatic value. The fact that science works so well, its possible shortcomings nowithstanding, indicates that it most likely actually has some degree of correspondence to an underlying reality, though it is possible that we may never be able to know with absolute certainty what that reality is like "in-itself."

In short, cut short the arrogance and realize that you (like all of us) have a lot more to learn. It is apparent that you have many misconceptions about the issues that have been brought up here.

Sorry David, I didn't realize this was "a leave your brains at the door" thread.

I'm interested in the truth, and it seems to me that Jews/Zionists are a sneaky bunch, too bad if you're one of them or believe the media hype about them[they effectively own and control the western media, but the powerbase in the US}.

That's a very cute rhyme. You must have gotten it from your extensive reading.

So you're attacking the cosmologists now? How much physics or cosmology do you actually know? Unless you can derive general relativity from first principles, I doubt that you have any way of making a reasoned claim about what physics can and cannot investigate.

The fact that the universe is eternal is a logical deduction... really? From what? All of the traditional arguments are circular, as Hume and Kant showed (but you're intelligent enough to not need to read them, so I assume you already knew that). What, then, did you mean? Are there axioms that demonstrate that the universe is eternal? If so, can you successfully argue that the conclusions that come from axioms are not just tautological restatements of your initial assumptions? Going back to your purported expertise of cosmology (I take your belittling of cosmologists who investigate the origin of the universe as an implicit statement that you view yourself as enough of an authority to make such a claim), there is actually a good amount of research being done that investigates whether or not the laws of physics have changed over time. It is increasingly the view among physicists that the laws of nature are not static ideal Platonic laws but in some way emerge with matter.

As a matter of fact, I stated that knowledge does exist within a context, which you claim, but then you go on, having claimed that knowledge exists inside of some context, to also claim that it is therefore universally true, which can be problematic. As I've said over and over, the twentieth century is rife with illustrations of how traditionally "stable" reference points undermined their own stability from within. For maybe the 5th or 6th time, no one is rejecting the use of their senses. It is only the conclusions based on sense data that are being questioned - to what extent is the sense data totally consistent between different reference frames and what does it mean to call something "real"?

The fact that existence exists is either tautological and therefore no kind of special claim, or it is an onto-theological claim of the same nature as "God exists." Any high school student could tell you that you need science to determine axioms and information. The question is about what kind of meta-logical theorems can we obtain that tell us something about the ultimate consistency of our interpretations.

Where did I promote religion, mysticism, or refute truth? At the most, I offered a quasi-pragmatic theory of truth that defines truth as that which works.

Your view lacks considerable argumentative evidence, however, and is perhaps more subject to the criticism that it is prompted by the desire of its results rather than real evidence. You want reality to be entirely concrete and decidable. You have not offered any argument other than "Look, it is!" On the other hand, logic and reason point out their own limits in definite ways. Get back to us after you've read and found a problem with Godel's proof of incompleteness.

Please enthral us with your acumen thalion, tell us whether the universe is finite or infinite, if it's infinite, how do you suppose you'll go about measuring it...?...OTOH, if it's finite, where is your measure...?

Now you're questioning what it means for something to be real, yet also pretending to accept that reality exits....sux to be inside your head buddy, LOL

DavidIg : whole purpose of doubting reality and denouncing truth is to promote religion and mysticism....both of which are delusional and lead to might makes right forms of ethical systems, so thanks but no thanks.

Exactly, all religion was, is a political system of control, so the objective remains the same, but now the con-game is called government using "Government said" instead of "God said".

Notice how government representatives are always looking for a Political Messiah? These political whores of today, have the same criminal mentality as the whores of the cloth, where by questioning reality, they can say "Come follow me, I can save you from yourself", which is as delusional, as any bible thumping head banger.

fresco,

An atheistic collectivist, is only a political whore, that doesn't try to hide their criminal mentality behind the sock puppet of god said.

Spot on JJ....philosophy is a system of idea's and knowledge, and all students of philosophy should know that historically, how we view the universe determines how we view ourselves to a large degree, so obviously if our starting point is "subjectivity", then there's little hope of objectivity higher up the chain.

Also, these "kids" seem to forget that ethics are forced upon us by virtue of simply interacting with each other, so it behoves us to create a basic framework that doesn't discriminate against anyone, otherwise people would have a legitimate basis to reject "subjective ethics", but what kind of fool rejects that which guarantee's his safety via a mutual contract... :shock

fresco,


The Church of England is only Neo-Judaism. Why would anyone want to live where their state religion makes it a Jewish ****-hole?

Jenifer: I commend your ability to complain about very specific uses of words where the meaning is entirely clear while ignoring the main point. Perhaps I should have rephrased. Rather than "racism" I meant "unjustified prejudice towards those of the Jewish faith, which has strong political and historical connections to the nation of Israel."

What do you mean by unjustified?
Also, both JJ and I reject every religion, however, unlike you, we're aware of the strong Jewish influence in many western countries, usually manifesting most blatantly via it's foreign policy decisions, but also by it's domestic one's, ie, turning England into Englastan.

Perhaps your rejection of the work of Neils Bohr? You interpret me as some kind of lover of all things Jewish because I object to your ignorant refusal to acknowledge the work of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers.

I looked into many of the so-called problems of philosophy years ago....my conclusion regarding aspects of quantum physics was that it was a load of bullshit in that scientists were using maths to justify religious prejudices they held.....but like it or not, I won't be dragging out my notes so to speak, as I don't expect you'll buy my side of the story.

The size and longevity of this thread has exceeded my expectation, but my main goal is to prompt people to investigate truth, knowledge, objectivism and individualism, of course, had I met people who I thought had the "right stuff", we could've discussed various issues in private......but until people come to terms with reality's absolute status, I'm only going to invest so much.

People who think that quarks, black holes, dark matter, big bangs etc have merit are dreaming.....they're not even good speculative models....but if anyone reading this is curious, you can do searches for Objective science, maybe they'll be able to convince you since they have more status than I do, and you guys seem to be such establishment whores.

Davidlfg wrote:
"The size and longevity of this thread has exceeded my expectation, but my main goal is to prompt people to investigate truth, knowledge, objectivism and individualism, of course, had I met people who I thought had the "right stuff", we could've discussed various issues in private......but until people come to terms with reality's absolute status, I'm only going to invest so much."

after all you have said david, I do not think you will ever find anyone who is made of the "right stuff".

Genuine truthseekers are as rare as hen's teeth.

If it is not truth that we are seeking david, then what are we seeking in your eyes?

(sorry ep....that was to David's last one liner. )

To be religious.
What's your definition of truth anyway...?