Objectivism and Ayn Rand [Philosophy] (49)

14 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2007-02-19 01:56 ID:n5RkQAYZ

> http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand.htm#1

Now, I do agree that Objectivism is a bigpile of nonsense, but I'm really having trouble with some of these arguments. The author makes far too much of a priori knowledge and universals, for one.

He makes some obviously wrong claims about a priori knowledge, for one:

  • "Mathematics is a priori" - I don't think any mathematician would agree on that one. Mathematics is based on the principles of logic, which may or may not be a priori, but I'll not speak on that matter, and on a set of essentially arbitary axioms. There is nothing a priori about those.
  • "It is not possible for something to be created out of nothing" - Any decent physicist will tell you that this is not only false, it is happening all the time, everywhere, at an unimaginable rate. Quantum fluctuations are literally "something being created out of nothing", and they may well be the most common event in the universe.

There are other questionable ones, such as "If A and B have different heights, then either A is taller than B or B is taller than A" and "'Inside' is a transitive relation" which seem to be simply derived statements from definitions of terms and mathematics and physics, and certainly should not be considered a priori.

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