User talk:TallNapoleon: Difference between revisions

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Hello, TallNapoleon! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}}on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! SwirlBoy39 22:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply] Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest •Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

A Request for Mediation to which you were are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the case subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Ayn Rand. For the Mediation Committee, Ryan Postlethwaite 00:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

A request for arbitration has been filed with the Arbitration Committee that lists you as a party. The Arbitration Committee requires that all parties listed in an arbitration must be notified of the aribtration. You can review the request at [[1]]. If you are unfamiliar with arbitration on Wikipedia, please refer to Wikipedia:Arbitration. Idag (talk) 01:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Combine Ayn Rand with no formal training in philosophy and the result is JazzFan. I'm ignoring him. CABlankenship (talk) 13:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is fascinating to find that people like that exist however, worth a paper in its own right.

TallNapoleon - re your question on Peter's page. You might want to look out Complex Adaptive Systems theory - increasing in use in IT systems and more generically in management and social science. My degree is Philosophy and Physics and I find it fascinating. --Snowded TALK 16:16, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Training in philosophy without training in science is a recipe for disaster. Rand's biggest flaw was her complete lack of interest and understanding of science. Her followers seem determined to repeat this mistake. CABlankenship (talk) 04:38, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fully agree with that, and the naturalising tradition in Epistemology is among the most exciting developments in the field. Gives the word "objective" coherence! --Snowded TALK 10:09, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So I have a good deal of training in science, but fairly little in philosophy--the only philosophy course I've taken was an ethics course on Morality and Self-Interest. I actually forwarded JazzFan the final paper I wrote for that course, which was a very, very harsh critique of Rand. Anyway, that will change next semester when I start my Master's in History, but even then most of the philosophy I'll be getting will be primarily critical and historical. Since my epistemological background is minimal, what do you mean by the "naturalising tradition"?

I'm curious what you guys think about the importance of philosophers knowing science. Certainly, I think it's very important for scientists to know philosophy, if only as a humbling experience. I know a great many scientists, mathematicians and engineers with very little understanding of philosophy, and this tends to breed an incredible intellectual arrogance. I remember very vividly a freshman last year telling me "Science is how we know EVERYTHING" and having a field day carving up the logical problems in that statement. Unfortunately, that attitude appears to be highly prevalent amongst many within the technical fields. Anyway, I've wandered a bit. Have a nice night! TallNapoleon (talk) 10:52, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ayn Rand recognized and asserted the validity of science as the result of man's mind to perceive reality, that in fact there IS such a thing as reality, that it can be analyzed and understood, that to propose otherwise is absurd and self-contradictory. This isn't to presuppose infallibility or omniscience but that knowledge can be gained and applied. Or do you see some hole in this proposition? TheJazzFan (talk) 18:13, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not in particular. I just find Objectivism's characterization of modern science as anti-reason or irrational to be ridiculous. Again, Rand did not accept evolution. Near as I can tell she positively rejected quantum mechanics. As Branden put it, she was profoundly skeptical of any scientific advances since Newton (perhaps because his billiard ball model of the universe was disproven in favor of a probabilistic one?). TallNapoleon (talk) 18:52, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"...she was profoundly skeptical of any scientific advances since Newton..." Got any citations on that other than Branden? I find that to be a somewhat odd and broad assertion. I know she wasn't a big fan of the environmentalist movement, found it to be alarmist, based on pseudo-science and harboring a hidden agenda, just like contemporary crticisms of it. But she was certainly aware of space exploration, nuclear energy, etc. She exhalted technological innovation in her novels.

But even if she made statements about specific matters of science that were inaccurate it's really a side issue - it in no way undermines the foundation of her assertions regarding the efficacy of reason & logic, that it *is* possible to know.TheJazzFan (talk) 23:49, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I'd be interested in seeing your paper. I assume you have it in e-mailable form? Send it to izzaspamcatcher at yahoo daht com

And I see how CAB's been "ignoring" me.TheJazzFan (talk) 21:11, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, read through it. It's disingenuous to characterize it as a paper addressing the Holocaust which isn't even mentioned. Nazism is referenced only in passing. It's an anti-Objectivism polemic.

A book I'd suggest is "The Ominous Parallels" by Leonard Peikoff, which is an examination of the Holocaust.

From a summary of the book "Peikoff argues that the deepest roots of German Nazism lie not in existential crises, but in ideas — not in Germany's military defeat in World War I or the economic disasters of the Weimar Republic that followed, but in the philosophy that dominated pre-Nazi Germany. Although it was mediated by crises, Peikoff demonstrates that German Nazism was the inevitable climax of a centuries-long philosophic development, preaching three fundamental ideas: the worship of unreason, the demand for self-sacrifice and the elevation of society or the state above the individual."TheJazzFan (talk) 11:52, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't characterize it as a paper on the Holocaust. I characterized it as a paper concluding that Rand and her followers are idolaters. Certainly plenty of other people (see Ozick) have traced the Holocaust to idolatry, however.TallNapoleon (talk) 18:48, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The wording you used suggested to me it was primarily about the root causes of the Holocaust and somehow tying in Rand's ideas:

"I have in fact given a great deal of thought to the root causes of the Holocaust, and assure you that I feel no moral ambivalence whatsoever about it. My conclusion is that events like the Holocaust are caused by idolatry--the worship of human constructs or worse, human beings. Having read all of Rand's novels and much of her nonfiction, I also conclude that she and her followers are idolaters, and would be glad to forward you a paper I wrote a couple of years ago that argues just that."

At any rate you've greatly misunderstood & mischaracterized what she said. In short, "you don't get it". I would largely attribute it to the fact that you embrace religious tenets as valid. Objectivism and religion are imcompatible.TheJazzFan (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]