Sensations?

[MrBenjamatic]

I've been reading Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I've barely read it but I've done a lot of thinking about it. It's obviously not a book you can read in a week or a month as you have to completely understand each sentence to understand the next sentence. Anyway, Rand wasn't clear, to me, about sensations (and the dictionary was too broad). From what I understand a sensation is the sensory evidence of one of your senses in a given moment. Am I right in saying this?

[Dglgmut]

I think Rand differentiated between sensory information and sensation. I'm pretty sure a sensation is the entire experience including how you feel about it; the sensory information plus whether or not it felt good/bad and in what way.

Pain is part of a sensation, but not sensory information.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Philip,

There's a long journey ahead. My suggestion here is to go with your gut.

If you feel there's something not right about the change in style or the clarity of the concepts Rand presented, keep questioning them.

In my opinion. there's value in ITOE, but it is a very flawed work.

Here are a couple of hints that might ring your subconscious warning bells. The style is eye-glazingly boring. Rand overused the passive voice to the point where it is almost a style in itself. That produces a more learned and academic tone without producing any more information. Why would she do that? It's out of character for a master stylist like she was.

But one biggie I have had over the years is a question that hasn't stop nagging me as I read each sentence. How does she know?

You have to guess because she won't tell you. At least she did say how with ostensive definition. (For existence, she swung her arm around and said, "I mean this.") But generally she presents her premises using a rhetoric I call "argument by proclamation." She just says something is and it is. This form of arguing is there right from the very first sentence of Chapter 1:

Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration.

Ask yourself, how does she know that? Or more to the point of your question on sensations, a couple of lines later she said:

Sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory...

Really?

How does she know?

(silence and crickets chirping...)

That's a hell of a statement to take on faith.

There are many such examples in ITOE.

If that form of proclaiming something as fact based on nothing more than "I said so" is not good enough for you (I know it's not good enough for me), then I say use Rand's own dictum: Check your premises.

Rand's a big girl. She's got plenty enough good stuff to take honest criticism and still remain an important voice for reason and a powerful inspiration, so she doesn't need anyone--not you, not me--to give her a pass when she fakes it or fudges.

Michael

[anthony]

Michael,

This "How does she know?" is endlessly absorbing.

My speculation is that Rand used her own self as model, and as guinea-pig.

Since consciousness is an axiom, she well knew she couldn't 'prove' anything empirically

about consciousness. She could only present it as "show and tell". (Could this explain her

strangely awkward departure of style, you mention about ITOE?)

Going back - maybe the first half-impression I had on reading Rand was her confidently-assertive inductive powers.

Not that I understood the word then.

It closely corresponded with my own dreamy juvenile background of imagination, induction, and introspection, and sparked my fascination with her philosophy. Nowhere near her level of course, but I sensed which powerful

tools she had used, and where she'd drawn her ideas from. Long after, I'm more convinced.

So, to your question, how DID she know?

My guess, many years of sustained and intense:- Induction.Introspection.Imagination.Observation.

Self-Awareness.Empathy.

Throw in Aristotle et al, with all the authors she'd read (great fiction is a famously rich source

of human nature), a huge intellect and self belief - and stir...

You advise "Know thyself". Rand certainly knew herself.

No proof needed or possible of her exposition in ITOE on consciousness: the proof is in the eating, and

does it fit one's own experience and consciousness?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tony,

I have no problem with someone looking inward, noticing things and reporting them. Nor of anyone looking outward, seeing patterns and reporting those (say, like Maslow did in studying healthy people for psychology instead of the mentally ill).

To be fair to Rand, she did say her theory of concept formation was a theory. But the way she presented it in her exposition was dogmatically. Argument by proclamation, as I said above.

Notice the difference between the standard for axiomatic concepts and the standard for her claim that sensations are not retained in memory as sensations.

In an axiomatic concept, you have to use it yourself in order to negate it. That is pretty compelling.

But her other claim about sensations has nothing of the sort to back it up. And if you start studying neuroscience, you start getting really uncomfortable if you want to maintain that position.

There are many such claims in ITOE.

The fundies will balk (and maybe get heartburn if my idea here gets any traction), but let's call on Nathaniel Branden help her out.

There is a fascinating passage in his book, The Art of Living Consciously where he presents an idea by Ken Wilber that deals with precisely the kind of thing that is necessary to back up Rand's statements. (The book by Wilber he mentioned is Eye to Eye.) Branden was discussing mysticism and Wilber's idea of "eyes" of knowledge, but the following creeped in bearing a form that can be standalone. I believe it deserves more exposure and exploration. It actually comes from Wilber, but NB said he chose it because, "I regard it as the most ingenious [argument] I have encountered."

I don't want to deal here with NB's comments on Wilber's defense of mysticism. The idea below, or at least the way NB phrased it, is the golden nugget. It cuts to the very core of what knowledge is on a fundamental level. From pp 203-204

... Wilber argues, the principles by which knowledge is validated in the three domains [flesh, reason and contemplation] are ultimately the same--this is his key point. Three steps are always involved in the verifying of knowledge. First, there is the instrumental injunction--"if you want to know this, do this." If you want to know if it's raining, go look. If you want to know how much is 36 times 36, go do the calculation. Then there is the cognitive grasp--the mind's appreciation of the data and its meaning. I see water falling; it is raining. I see that 36 time 36 equals 1296. Then there is the communal confirmation--checking the objectivity (the "intersubjectivity" would be Wilber's preferred term) of our knowledge by determining that others who traced our steps see the same things and arrive at the same conclusions.

All scientific conclusions reflect these three steps: we take actions of one kind or another that bring us into contact with certain data; we apprehend the meaning of the data; we ascertain that colleagues trained to reproduce our experiences--do the experiments, do the math, or whatever--arrive at the same final point. And thus is our knowledge confirmed. (And thus may it be disconfirmed--or at least put into question--if others who are qualified to reproduce our actions do so and find a different result.)

However--and here is a central point for the thesis--a person who is unable or unwilling to trace the scientist's steps is unqualified to pronounce judgment on the scientist's conclusions. Or, on a more primitive level, if I look out the window and say it's raining, and you refuse to look out the window while insisting it is not raining--your qualification to hold an opinion in this matter is not equal to mine.

Note that he says scientist, but this also applies to philosopher. (Or mystic for Wilber.)

Here in O-Land, we get a lot of denunciation and claims of certainty by people who have not looked at the idea they denounce, who refuse to look, and who thus cannot retrace any of the steps of the people they judge.

That's just plain arbitrary.

Rand committed this sin in ITOE. But at least she had an original basis for her observations. She introspected. That's not a great system for deriving universal principles to bash others with, but it is a great one for getting a start on a direction--for knowing what to look deeper into, so to speak.

Her followers (the mentally blind ones I am talking about above) don't even do that. They take her word as a replacement for their thinking and needing to look.

Whatever.

Rand's introspection, to me, is the value of ITOE. It's a signpost, not a map. You have to be on your own journey to use it. If you read the book in this spirit, it has enormous value. It's one hell of a prompt for thinking.

Others will have to separate the wheat from the chaff if the theories in that book are to gain universal validity. I'm talking about the ones that can be validated. I believe the ones that are merely Rand's opinions and nothing more--irrespective of her authoritative tone, which is style, not fact--will have to be discarded. Otherwise that book will always be nothing more than a fringe curiosity like it is today.

That is, except for Objectivist newbies and hardcore adherents. But those will believe anything Rand said by default (with some "safe" exceptions like her opinion of Beethoven, etc.)--the newbies innocently and the hardcore adherents by a conviction that resembles faith more than anything else (based on what I have read from them so far).

Epistemologically, Rand was more like a pioneer and less like an engineer. I say, what the hell is wrong with that? When a pioneer gets something wrong, the meaning and importance is far different than if an engineer mucks it up. You follow the footsteps of a pioneer when you go on your own journey and you can veer off that path if you wish or need to. But you use the stuff engineers make.

Michael

[anthony]

Yes, "pioneer" like you say, and I'm thinking of also an 'investigator' in the middle of her

investigation...while she still wrote (ITOE, especially.) This goes toward explaining her odd style in it:

people commonly tend to be stiffly dogmatic when we are uncertain, calm and relaxed when we are certain.

Rand was pushing the limits here, with no recourse to logic to back her, and she must have known it. All she could report is: I have been there, and I saw that - from which I derive THIS.

But the criticality of this work was obvious to her, since it lays the foundation for all the rest.

No mystery about Rand - she's an open book. At the most fundamental of fundamentals possible, as we know,

she had one simple thing to put over -

man's mind is equal to the task of dealing with reality.

As INTENT, is there any honest person who cannot applaud this as the most honorable motive conceivable?

Down the line follows that the individual - who alone has to form his own concepts, the knowledge which

includes his moral principles - can and will co-exist peaceably with others.

As for her methods, and the results, yes we can quibble here and there. She squeezed, pushed and prodded

a few things into place, and sometimes over-reached. As with her aesthetic pronouncements on

Beethoven and so on. Or her avoidance of man's instincts, (which I believe she mistrusted in their

fallibility and unpredictability.)

Used very, very advisedly, introspection and induction are invaluable, if checked and rechecked

against reality. They fast-track one to intermediate conclusions that would take far longer, or

be impossible by empirical, observational methods alone,imo.

However, Rand laid down the law on many things she had basically - and brilliantly - figuratively

(and crudely put)sucked out of her thumb. When she was right, she was very, very right - and when she was wrong...

No wonder is it that Objectivism 'became' Ayn Rand, and she, it.

I agree with you. In this area of consciousness, sensation, concepts, emotions, etc. we each have

to re-trace her steps, to see where it fits and follows, for ourselves.

[Peter]

Michael wrote:

Here are a couple of hints that might ring your subconscious warning bells. The style is eye-glazingly boring. Rand overused the passive voice to the point where it is almost a style in itself. That produces a more learned and academic tone without producing any more information. Why would she do that? It's out of character for a master stylist like she was . . . . Notice the difference between the standard for axiomatic concepts and the standard for her claim that sensations are not retained in memory as sensations.

end quote

I have not thought about ITOE for years. Excellent insights, Michael. A task in everyone’s self interest would be, in book or internet form, to produce a companion piece for ITOE written as a teacher might teach Objectivist Epistemology. It should be written by someone who is scientifically objective and not by a true believer or a yes man at the ARI.

For instance Dglgmut wrote:

I think Rand differentiated between sensory information and sensation. I'm pretty sure a sensation is the entire experience including how you feel about it; the sensory information plus whether or not it felt good/bad and in what way . . . . Pain is part of a sensation, but not sensory information.

end quote

That leads me to think of what would be an excellent essay “teacher’s question" after only reading a few pages? As an example, per Rand, experiencing the freezing cold is a sensation. Then you enter your Canadian back woods cabin and a roaring wood fire has been started. You sit down and re-live what you just felt outside. You shiver again. Of course remembering it and shivering and shivering from the actual cold are two different phenomenon but do you see my point?

ITOE needs a companion. Michael and everyone, who is up to the task? I would love to reread ITOE only also with a back up source. It could be sold exclusively, right off Objectivist Living. You could make a mint!

Peter Taylor

[Peter]

Rand ’s style in ITOE IS “eye-glazingly boring.” What happened to her? Did Peikoff actually write it? None of her magazine essays were at all boring. Yet in this tiny book I hear the “Oracle of Atlantis,” admonishing Grasshopper to, “Memorize this and be able to quote it at the drop of a hat.”

Peter.

[Dglgmut]

But one biggie I have had over the years is a question that hasn't stop nagging me as I read each sentence. How does she know?

Sorry to bring this back, but I just made a connection that pertains to this type of argument, or whatever you want to call it that Rand did when she made claims without explaining her reasoning or sourcing her evidence.

Reading Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions has made me aware that there is more to the process of reasoning than what can be articulated (which I'm assuming was only reiterated by Sowell, and was theorized long ago). I think the goal behind Rand's choice of style of expression in some cases was that examples would only cheapen an argument that was self-evident on a fundamental level of human consciousness.

Sometimes knowledge is founded on inarticulable reasoning.

I am not saying that she was right, but I am guessing that's what she was trying for; not argument by proclamation, but agreement by inarticulable reasoning.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Calvin,

I don't like the term "inarticulable reasoning" when applied to someone like Rand, who was very clear about what she meant by reason.

I vastly prefer to say she observed, she mulled it over, she concluded her observations were correct at a primary level, and she went from there. Stylistically, since formal academic philosophy was not her typical subject, she imitated the one she most admired, Aristotle. (Or, to be more precise, the translators of Aristotle.) That sounds a lot more like her.

See ITOE for the formal part (including her throwing her arm around and saying, "I mean this,") and The Art of Nonfiction and The Art of Fiction for a more intimate look at how she handled her subconscious.

Michael

[Xray]

I have not thought about ITOE for years. Excellent insights, Michael. A task in everyone’s self interest would be, in book or internet form, to produce a companion piece for ITOE written as a teacher might teach Objectivist Epistemology.

[/indent]

[Xray]

I have not thought about ITOE for years. Excellent insights, Michael. A task in everyone’s self interest would be, in book or internet form, to produce a companion piece for ITOE written as a teacher might teach Objectivist Epistemology.

Writing a companion piece to ITOE would be difficult because the book contains many passages which create confusion instead of clarity.

A more economic and practical approach might be to just distill from ITOE the basic epistemological ideas Objectivism rests on.

Imo trying instead to fit each statement made by Rand in ITOE into a non-contradictory system is an impossible task.