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Old Mar 27, 2008, 02:33 am   #22 (permalink) (top)
Morality Games
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That's incorrect. Objectivist epistemology does not embrace the idea that I, or you, or anyone else knows everything. I know that I do not know everything. What the Objectivist epistemology does promote is the idea that one can know something and that certainty is possible.
Which is what I said? I agree we can know something, and a feeling of certainty is possible, but if Objectivism contends certainty in-itself is possible, as a mental state, then my objections were spot on, since absolute certainty on any subject would necessarily require complete knowledge of everything that pertains to the situation. This is not possible, since, even if you acquired all the essential knowledge, you could not be certain of the validity of that knowledge until you acquired all information pertaining to it as well, etc, until eventually you find yourself on a hunt to know everything.

Quote:
I hold the conviction that my thoughts on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics are logically correct. I do not hold (nor did Rand) that Objectivism knew every "abstract of significance". What I think and what Rand thought was that Objectivism laid down general principles from which other truths, concepts, abstractions, and premises can be established.
Ayn Rand considered her conceptions of economics, politics, and human nature to be necessary consequences of the underlying principles of her epistemology, and her epistemology as necessarily true in so far as humans are real and reality is actual. Once again, my objections were spot on.

You just employed a logical fallacy in the other thread (aka, because living precedes any other objective it must necessarily be more valuable, and this in spite of the fact cavemen necessarily come before us, and in spite of the fact people can provide good reasons for thinking otherwise, etc), so the logical correctness of your thoughts is up for debate.


A moral being is an entity for whom the disadvantage of others is an issue.
– K.H.Y.
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