Dick, (01)
I believe that Ayn Rand was a better than average thinker. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a long, sympathetic review
of her philosophy by two professors at Auburn and George Mason U. (02)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/ (03)
I agree with the reviewers that her basic views are respectable,
but many points are unclear, fragmentary, debatable, and possibly
contradictory (depending on how they might be clarified). (04)
> I like the way she thinks. You don't. (05)
Two points: (06)
1. That is a purely subjective claim. It is not suitable for anything
that might be called *objecivist*. (07)
2. And for that matter, I actually like the way she thinks. What I
am questioning is her knowledge of the subject she is making claims
about. That point can be tested *objectively* by comparing what
she said to current research in cognitive science. (08)
> However, most of the "evidence" in epistemology comes from introspection. (09)
No. Please study epistemology. You can start with the SEP article: (010)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ (011)
You might also look at the references in my article on epistemic logic: (012)
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/5qelogic.pdf (013)
For knowledge about the world and other people, introspection is of
ZERO help. Even for what is going on inside one's brain, conscious
thought is a tiny fraction of the internal processing. (014)
The issues about how perception and consciousness are related to
knowledge, language, etc., are not a matter for introspection. They
can be stated as hypotheses, tested by experiment, and revised on
the basis of the experimental results. That's science! (015)
For recent *science* on the subject, I recommend: (016)
Dehaene, Stanislas (2014) Consciousness and the Brain, New York:
Viking. (017)
There are other good books by Damasio and others. But if you read one
or two of those books, I guarantee that there is no way you could take
Ayn Rand's claims as a serious starting point for ontology. (018)
A huge amount about the workings of the human brain is still unknown.
But what neuroscientists know today goes far beyond anything she said. (019)
John (020)
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