John
point 1) agreed. Saying "I like" was rather careless.
I have studied & thought about it.
point 2) I was wrong to think that you disliked Rand's way of
thinking. I don't know you well enough.
I have not read any recent books on research in cognitive science,
so I'll take a low score on that issue.
I think the same applies to you. By relying on the reviews of
other people, you are missing some insights into Rand's character.
I can remember her writing that there were details of our brain
functions that were unknown, and would have to be discovered through
future research. She wrote ITOE in the 1960s. She did not claim
to know everything.
Dick McCullough
Context Knowledge Systems
mKE and the mKR language
mKR/mKE tutorial> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:42:29 -0400
> From: sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Maxwell's Equations for Knowledge
>
> Dick,
>
> 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.
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/
>
> 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).
>
> > I like the way she thinks. You don't.
>
> Two points:
>
> 1. That is a purely subjective claim. It is not suitable for anything
> that might be called *objecivist*.
>
> 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.
>
> > However, most of the "evidence" in epistemology comes from introspection.
>
> No. Please study epistemology. You can start with the SEP article:
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
>
> You might also look at the references in my article on epistemic logic:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/5qelogic.pdf
>
> 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.
>
> 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!
>
> For recent *science* on the subject, I recommend:
>
> Dehaene, Stanislas (2014) Consciousness and the Brain, New York:
> Viking.
>
> 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.
>
> A huge amount about the workings of the human brain is still unknown.
> But what neuroscientists know today goes far beyond anything she said.
>
> John
>
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