Month: August 2018

Karl Marx, Polylogism, and Utopian Socialism – How Fundamental Philosophy Drives History

I’m currently listening to: “The Long 19th Century:European History From 1789 to 1917”  Professor Robert I.Weiner (Disk 4, Lecture 7), from  ‘The Great Courses’ series.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/long-19th-century-european-history-from-1789-to-1917.html

It is a pretty ‘middle of the road’ series with no obvious ideological skew other than, maybe, ‘slightly left of center’, since it’s a mainstream college professor.

In it, he says Karl Marx called the other socialists ‘utopians’ because they believed that socialism could be achieved through peaceful means, maybe even with the assistance of other classes. That is where the term ‘utopian socialist’ comes from.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism

Marx, on the other hand, believed that only violent class struggle could achieve socialism.

I realized when listening to this that Marx’s metaphysics and epistemology was driving his politics. He thought that your class determines your consciousness -that what class you are born into determines your logic. He was a ‘polylogist’ who believed in ‘many logics’. The proletarians have their method of thinking, the bourgeoise have theirs, the aristocracy have theirs, etc.

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/polylogism.html

Thus, for Marx, there could be no reasoning with those who control the factors of production, because they fundamentally don’t think like proletarians. Only violence could bring about socialism. Any socialist who thought you could reason with the bourgeoise was a ‘utopian’ -not recognizing reality. Marxism was therefore self-described as ‘scientific socialism’.

This explains the inevitable Marxist penchant for mass killing when they took over in a country. Anyone who wanted a peaceful transition to socialism was seen as naive at best.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

Later, what I think happened is others picked up this same idea of polylogism and applied it to things besides class -such as your race or ethnicity. (Specifically, a certain political group in 1930’s Germany.) Once again, without a common frame of thinking and logic, any such proponent of ‘racially unique logic’ would be led to believe that no reason or discourse is possible between the races, and that only violence or separation is the solution.

I vaguely knew about polylogism from reading Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff. http://www.peikoff.com/lr/home.htm But,  I never really saw how one’s views on logic and the nature of the mind could have political ramifications like they clearly did on Marx when he referred to his fellow, non-violent, socialists as ‘utopians’. Furthermore, any time a Marxist committed murder, he had the perfect rationalization handy: He is serving the forces of historical necessity, and no reasoning is possible with the forces of counter-revolution because they don’t think like him.

Fundamental philosophy really does have political and social consequences for history.

Objectivism Conference Day 6

Logic Course Day 6

Most of Day 6 was a “questions and answers” session, and I don’t have much in the way of notes.

The only notes I have concern “propositional fallacies”.

The first is “self-exclusion”, which was defined as a form of self-refutation consisting of a contradiction between the content a proposition asserts and the act of asserting it.

An example of “self-exclusion” was: “We cannot be certain of anything.” I’ve heard this before. And my understanding is basically that by saying this, you are stating something with certainty, but you just said that you cannot be certain of anything…so you wind up in a sort of paradox or internal contradiction by saying this. I’m assuming the speaker called it “self-exclusion” because the speaker is, consciously or unconsciously, looking to “exclude” their statement from the general principle it asserts.

The speaker noted that you almost never “reach” anyone by pointing out when they’ve stated a self-exclusion like this. That is also my experience. Marxists will say that your class determines your consciousness, and that you can never get away from that, yet these same Marxists came from the bourgeois, and not the proletariat that they claim to speak for. But, if that is pointed out, they’ll just come up with some sort of complicated rationalization for why they’re different. (Although this might be more of an example of the next propositional fallacy.)

The second propositional fallacy that I have in my notes is the “stolen concept”. As far as I know, this is a term coined by Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/stolen_concept,_fallacy_of.html

A stolen concept was defined by the speaker as a hierarchy violation consisting of the attempt to use a concept in a way that ignores or denies the prior concepts on which it depends for meaning. One example given by the speaker of a “stolen concept” was: “A fully free society is an impossible ideal.” I think what the speaker meant was that “ideal” is being used without considering what “ideal” means. An ideal is “the possible”, so to say that an ideal is “impossible” is to disregard the fact that the concept of “ideal” is hierarchically dependent on the concept of “possible”. Another example of a “stolen concept” given by the speaker was: “We have an obligation to preserve the environment.” Here, “obligation” is being used without considering its logical hierarchy. What I think the speaker meant was this: Objectivism starts out by asking “Why be moral at all?” or “Why do we need morality?” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html
Without getting into the details, which can be found in “The Objectivist Ethics” in _The Virtue of Selfishness_ by Ayn Rand, Objectivism says the concept of “moral obligation” depends on the concept of “value”, which depends on the concept of “mans life”, and the fact that you only need moral principles if you want to live. If you don’t want to live, then no moral principles are necessary. (Not only that, but no thinking, definitions, or concepts are necessary -we need to be rational in order to live.)

The idea of “hierarchy” requires a bit of explanation for someone not familiar with Objectivism. In the sense that it was being used by the speaker, “hierarchy” is a concept from Objectivism, or, at least, that is where I learned the concept. In “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, in the chapter on definitions, Rand says:

“Since the definition of a concept is formulated in terms of other concepts, it enables man, not only to identify and retain a concept, but also to establish the relationships, the hierarchy, the integration of all his concepts and thus the integration of his knowledge. Definitions preserve, not the chronological order in which a given man may have learned concepts, but the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence.” (See “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, Rand, Page 40, Kindle Edition, https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second-ebook/dp/B002OSXD8C/
)

What Rand meant when she spoke of “hierarchy” of concepts was the idea that certain concepts must logically depend on certain other concepts. A probable example of this is the concept “organism” compared to the concept “dog”. If you introspect a little, you will notice how the concept “dog” seems much “closer” in your mind to that which you perceive around you. How is it “closer”? You can visualize a dog in your mind with a single mental image, but how do you “visualize” an “organism”? “Organism” is a concept denoting any type of living thing, whether it is a plant, an animal, or an amoeba. You could draw a simplistic picture of a dog, but you couldn’t draw a picture of an “organism” and really “get it”. You’d have to have multiple pictures of different type of living things that are organisms. (A question here might be *which* dog do you visualize? Do you visualize a German Shepherd or a Chihuahua? But, only as compared to the concept “organism”, the concept “dog” is easier to visualize because you could visualize any particular dog you’ve seen, while you couldn’t visualize any *particular* organism you’ve seen and “grasp” the concept -you’d have to visualize different types of organisms, and doing so simultaneously would be difficult due to the “crow epistemology”, further discussed below.)

In fact, even “plant” and “animal” are concepts that seem, in some sense, to be “further” away from what you observe in the world around you. “Plant” can mean a rose, or a blade of grass, or a a tree. “Animal”  can mean a squirrel, a wasp, an oyster, or a human being. Rand also seemed to believe that the concept “animal” is logically dependent on underlying concepts like “squirrel”. Although, I will note here, that Rand discussed this issue at a seminar with various people, and she seemed to indicate that it is possible a child could form a concept “in a very loose way”, like “living entity” versus “inanimate object”, and then later subdivide the concept into “man”, “animal”, “plant” on the one hand and “tables”, “rocks”, and “houses” on the other. (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Page 204, Kindle Ed. This appendix is her speaking extemporaneously, in response to other people’s questions, so whether it would have been her definitive view on the subject upon further consideration can also be questioned.) Rand said there was the possibility of “options” in terms of how a particular child formed a concept and the chronological order in which concepts were formed. When we speak of “hierarchy” we are speaking of the “logical order” of concepts, from an adult perspective.

I think it is probably impossible to form the concept “organism” without first forming the concepts of particular types of organisms because the concept “organism” involves too much observational data to be formed as an initial matter. Your mind cannot hold all of the observations that would be necessary to form that concept without underlying concepts. This phenomena of our minds is called “the crow epistemology” or “the crow” in Objectivist circles due to a story that was told to Ayn Rand at some point. The story is found at the beginning of chapter 7, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts” in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

The concept of the “crow” can be grasped by way of the story in ITOE. You can read it there for the complete version, but here is my “run down”: Supposedly, a scientist ran an experiment in which someone hidden would observe another person walk into a clearing in the woods where a flock of crows had gathered. The crows would fly away at the approach of the person. The crows only returned to the clearing when the single person left the woods by the same route he came in. Then two people entered the forest, and went into the clearing. The crows left, and wouldn’t come back until *both* people had left. Then three people, to the same effect on the crows. Then, four people. Same effect on the crows. Then, when five people entered the woods and walked to the clearing, something different happened. Only four people left the forest, while the fifth person presumably hid somewhere in the forest near the clearing. The crows came back to the clearing because they couldn’t discern in their minds that while five people had entered the forest, only four had left.

Rand notes that regardless of whether this story is true, the phenomena can be grasped introspectively in your own mind. You can tell that “|||” is three, probably without counting. However, without counting, try to discern “|||||||||” from “|||||||||||”. It’s fairly difficult, without engaging in some sort of conceptual thought. (You might be able to discern a length difference in this example, but that wouldn’t be available to the crows in the forest, and measuring length is likely a form of conceptual consciousness anyway. If you made the lines I’ve drawn here nine random dots in a circle versus ten random dots in another circle, you probably couldn’t discern any difference without counting.)

Rand’s concept of “hierarchy” takes this fact about how our minds work, “the crow”, into account and then tries to develop a system of thinking based on it. So, she is not saying that the concept “dog” is somehow more fundamental than the concept “organism” in some sort of “metaphysical sense” -out there in the universe. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/metaphysical.html
In reality, apart from human beings, there are just things. Human beings categorize them based on the needs of their minds and lives -which are also specific things with a specific identity.

I believe this feature of the human mind and the concept of “hierarchy” has practical consequences for how you should approach learning. For instance, if you want to study Biology, the science of living organisms, you have to learn something about individual living things. You study particular frogs by dissecting them. This helps you to learn about frogs. Then, you study particular pigs by dissecting fetal pigs. This teaches you something about pigs. Then, you see what frogs and pigs have in common, as animals. Then you study particular roses and particular trees and learn what they have in common as plants. Then you can discern what both plants and animals have in common as organisms. By way of contrast,  a Platonist will say there is an “ideal pig” somewhere in the Platonic realm and the pigs you see around you are just “shadows” of the ideal pig in the Platonic realm. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/platonic_realism.html  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/

Then, the Platonist will say that there is an “ideal organism” in the Platonic realm, and all organisms are just a reflection of the ideal organism in the Platonic realm, and so on. But, none of these concepts necessarily have any logical connection in the mind of a Platonist. There isn’t any hierarchy there. The “ideal features” of an organism exist in the Platonic realm in some “pure” form, while the “ideal features” of a pig also exist in the Platonic realm in their “pure form”. I doubt that a science of biology would even be considered necessary for a Platonist. The Platonist could study pigs at the same time he studies the stars and human consciousness. There is no greater or lesser connection in the mind of a Platonist between pigs and other animals than there is between pigs and the chemical composition of the interior of the sun.  They’re all just a reflection of their ideal form. Furthermore, the Platonist believes he can learn something about the concept of “organism” without studying individual organisms. He just needs to “tap in” to the Platonic realm somehow.

I by no means consider myself to be an expert on Miss Rand’s epistemology, so what I’ve stated is just my own best understanding at the moment. If you found any of this interesting, I’d recommend reading three books. First, read “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” by Ayn Rand. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306/  Then read “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand” by Leonard Peikoff https://www.amazon.com/Objectivism-Philosophy-Ayn-Rand-Library/dp/0452011019/
, especially the chapter on “Objectivity”. Finally, although I am only about halfway through it, you should read “How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation” by Harry Binswanger. https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-Epistemology-Objectivist-Foundation/dp/1493753142/

This last book is by the author who was speaking at the conference, and I think what he spoke on is covered in his book, so to the extent that I’ve misinterpreted anything he said, you can learn what he thinks by reading the book.

As far as other speakers were concerned on day 6, I don’t have any notes. I think I didn’t find the other topics covered that day of sufficient interest to attend any of them, when there were still things I wanted to see on what would likely be my only extended vacation of the year from work. (This gets into what Ayn Rand described as “the hierarchy of values”.  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/teleological_measurement.html
)

Looking at the pictures I took on my phone, that was the day I took a bus south on Coast Highway to a place called Crystal Cove, near the beach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cove_State_Park  Although I had never been to that specific area, it reminded me of the Southern California beaches I would go to with family and friends as a child, so the geography, climate, vegetation, ocean, and wildlife all evoked strong memories for me from years that were probably fairly formative of my personality. There was a strong “nostalgia element” for me.

Once I got off the bus, I walked through scrub brush, trails, and down a hill to the actual beach, which was quite secluded. There were few people around, which gave the area a “magical” quality to me -like being the only person left in the world. This is a feeling that I think is nice to feel from time to time, although, if prolonged, it feels quite lonely. From there, I wandered down the beach for some distance until I found a series of dilapidated houses and a small bar and restaurant near the beach. From there, I had a beer, then walked back up the highway, and eventually caught a bus back. (The buses in the area were not great in terms of how often they ran, but I preferred a slow $4 bus ride to what might have been a $20 Uber ride.)

That night, I went to a West Coast Swing dance lesson and social dance, which I enjoyed a lot. I didn’t want to leave California without West Coast swinging.

Objectivism Conference Day 5

Logic Course Day 5

My notes show that we started with a  review of the homework. The first was coming up with the definition of “Rationalization”. Once again, I tried to work this idea out without using reference materials or the Internet for a definition.

The definition of “rationalization” I came up with prior to this class was: “An express explanation for something you do that hides or conceals your actual reason.”

The first thing that the speaker noted was that “rationalization” tended to be an “automatic thing”.

Examples the speaker gave were: (1)  a person who is dieting might say: “It’s all right to have that pie, it’s the weekend.” Or, (2) another person who wants to excuse his bad behavior might say: “I’m not to blame, because ‘freewill’ doesn’t exist.”

Facts giving rise to the concept of “rationalization” were: Freewill, “Honesty vs. Dishonesty”, “Rationality vs. Emotionalism”

“Near-relatives” of “rationalization” were: (1) “The check is in the mail” -Which I take as when someone says they have paid you when they really haven’t, but intend to do so very soon; (2) “Flattery” – which is where you complement someone with the motive to get something from them, or where you don’t really mean the compliment.

The “genus” or “rationalization” was described as: Deception.

The “differentia” of rationalization was described as: Deception of others and/or oneself about what’s really justified.

The full definition of “rationalization” given by the speaker based on the discussion was then: “Phony justifications manufactured to make emotionalism look enough like reason that one can indulge the emotionalism.”

The speaker then went over some “fallacies of conceptualization”.

According to my notes, which may be incomplete or not entirely accurate, the speaker discussed two broad categories of “fallacies of conceptualization”: (1) Insufficient Conceptualization, and (2) Mis-conceptualizations.

Regarding insufficient conceptualization, the speaker described three types: (a) Concrete-boundedness (i.e., non-conceptualization or non-integration); (b) Floating abstractions (i.e., “aborted conceptualization); and (c) “Frozen Abstraction” (i.e., insufficient conceptualization).

Regarding concrete-boundedness, I have no notes, but it is described some in the Ayn Rand Lexicon: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/learning.html  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/guild_socialism.html

The remedies for floating abstractions given by the speaker were to come up with: examples, definitions, and “reduction”. (This last term is an Objectivist term that you can find more information about in Leonard Peikoff’s book: “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”).

Regarding “frozen abstraction”, the speaker gave as an example: “Communism = Soviet Union”. I believe what the speaker was getting at here is that when you criticize communism by pointing to examples of the bad things the Soviets did, an apologist for communism will say “That was just the Soviet Union, I am a socialist, and my society will be different.” Basically, the speaker denies that what they believe is the same as what happened in the Soviet Union by saying in their mind: “Communism=Soviet Union”.

The example I came up with of “frozen abstraction” was “morality=altruism”, or “morality=religion”. So, you can only be moral if you are religious or an altruist. I got these examples from Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/frozen_abstraction,_fallacy_of.html

Within the category of “Mis-conceptualization” the speaker said these are “invalid concepts”. They either: (a) have no units, (b) have the wrong units, or (c) are what Rand called “anti concepts”. Keep in mind that “units” is an Objectivist term. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/unit.html

Regarding mis-conceptualizations that have no units, I have no examples in my notes, but I think the speaker was referring to terms like “ghost”. Since ghosts have no units, it is a mis-conceptualization to have a concept of “ghosts”. Although, I think “ghosts” can be a valid concept in the sense of: “A mythological being that exists only in fiction and made-up stories.” Just like “Elf” is: “A mythological being that exists only in fiction and made-up stories.”  There is no referent in reality, but you can have the concept “ghost” as long as you have as part of your definition that the thing isn’t real.

Regarding mis-conceptualizations that have the wrong units, I have in my notes that the speaker spoke of “package deals”. This is a term adopted by Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/package-dealing,_fallacy_of.html  The speaker said a “package deal” puts together in one concept things that are incompatible. For instance, “extremism”.  The speaker said the solution to this was the rule of “fundamentality”. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fundamentality,_rule_of.html

Regarding “anti-concepts”, which is a term coined by Ayn Rand, the speaker said these are bad concepts designed with an “evil purpose”.http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anti-concepts.html

The speaker said “socialization” is an example of this. “Socialization” was described by the speaker as a theory that the child gets his values and norms from other children. He says it implies that everyone is a “Peter Keating” and there are no “Howard Roark’s” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selflessness.html
. That learning is all “imitation” and that there is no observation of reality.

Another example given by the speaker of an “anti-concept” was “homelessness”, which is an attempt to destroy the concept of “bum”.

This isn’t in my notes, but I think what he was getting at was how you are throwing out all moral and ethical judgments that come with someone who chooses not to work and to just sit on the side of the road collecting money despite being able-bodied and able-minded to work. I think you have to distinguish between people who are not mentally-ill and have all of their limbs and choose not to work, who should be described as “bums”, versus people who are either mentally ill or missing body parts and can be somewhat morally excused for having no place to live and being unable to care for themselves. Calling both of those groups “homeless” destroys the moral distinction between those two types of people panhandling on the streets and sidewalks of most major American cities.

Objectivist 4th Of July Celebration
That’s all I have in my notes from July the 4th. Since it was a holiday, I believe there were no other lectures that day. There was an hour-long 4th of July celebration that I attended. Someone sang “America the Beautiful”, which I hadn’t heard since Elementary school in Texas.

One of the distinctions I remember between Elementary school in Texas versus when I attended it in California in the 1980’s, was the promotion of patriotism in Texas by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “America the Beautiful” in Elementary school. (I have some criticisms of Texas Elementary schools too, but that is for another time.)

There was also a reading of the “Declaration of Independence” at the Objectivism conference, which I realized is probably not read in school any more, since it refers to “merciless Indian Savages” and also makes allusions to “domestic insurrections”, which is clearly a reference to slaves in the South. http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/

Neither of these references bothers me at all -but I’m probably ‘out of touch’ with the cultural mainstream of America at this point. I’m certainly “out of touch” with most people who have a college degree -but I view this with pride.

I suspect if the Declaration is read in school today, it is with a heavy dose of retroactively imposing the knowledge-level of modern-day persons on people from the 18th century. Or, more likely, teachers in schools today emphasize the references to Indians and slaves in the Declaration of Independence in an effort to get students to mentally “throw out” the essential message of the Declaration of Independence, which is that all men have “unalienable rights”,  in order to make way for the “Progressive’s” collectivist ideology of socialism and the destruction of the sanctity of the individual.

As an aside, this is pretty much the same agenda associated with any effort to take down monuments to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington on the grounds that they owned slaves. It’s an attempt to take a non-essential of these historical figures and turn it into an excuse to destroy their essential meaning as historical figures  -which was that they advocated limited government, whose purpose is to allow people to pursue their unalienable rights to life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We study and revere certain historical figures because of their effect on the present, not because they were entirely consistent or because they had views or activities that were common to many people of that era. For instance, Isaac Newton is studied and revered because he developed a system of Physics that is still widely used today, not because he believed he could transmute lead into gold through alchemy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies

The notion that Newton had some unscientific views was a reflection of the era he lived in. The fact that he “rose above it” to develop the Theory of Universal Gravitation is why he is remembered today, and why he is regarded as a hero of science. That is the “essence” of Isaac Newton as a historical figure -even if the man didn’t always live up to that standard in some areas of his life.

Since Objectivism is explicitly an atheist philosophy, when the group-pledge was said at the conference, the words “under God” were explicitly removed. The guy leading the pledge of allegiance also somewhat “jokingly” noted that since half the audience was foreign, they were “excused” from saying it.

My own “relationship” with the Pledge of Allegiance is somewhat complicated, and I chose to simply stand while other Americans at the conference participated. (I have blogged before on saying the pledge, and I won’t re-iterate it here.)

Ayn Rand Institute Tour
I believe after the 4th of July Celebration, all I did conference-wise was go on a tour of the Ayn Rand Institute  that was being given. It was fairly interesting to see where the organizers of the conference worked on a daily basis. It had a lot of art work up on the walls, and various other things that would be of interest to Ayn Rand fans, so I enjoyed seeing it.

Trip to Balboa Peninsula
I then spent my afternoon touring the Newport Beach area, specifically Balboa Peninsula, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_Peninsula,_Newport_Beach
, which appeared to be the heart of the local tourist industry, with numerous beach houses and public beaches. Since it was the 4th of July, it was very crowded. I was glad I took a bus to the base of peninsula and then walked in, since traffic made travel by car almost impossible.

I was pleased to see so many American flags on display around the peninsula, as I have a perception of California as an anti-patriotic, left-wing state. Although, I think Orange County, the home of John Wayne, is somewhat of a “cultural outlier” on the coast of California. Orange County has more in common with Texas than it does with Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major population areas of the Golden State. One evening, I happened upon the web site of a local venue where dancing occurs, and I did a bit of a “double take” when I saw a Confederate Flag. (Even mentioning this somewhat concerns me, because I can see leftists now combing the dance venues of Orange County looking for Rebel flags so that they can ship in large numbers of protestors from Los Angeles to disrupt that business.)

Generally, my impression of the City of Newport Beach was fairly negative. I found it to have a “museum quality”, with few people, and very little “youthful energy”. I saw no production going on -just consumption, with a bunch of malls. It felt like a big shopping center or retirement community to me. A nice place for a vacation, but I don’t believe I’d enjoy living there. That day on the peninsula was an exception to my feeling. There were a lot of young people doing all of the things, both good and bad, that young people tend to do. The area felt very “alive” as a result.