Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: sci.philosophy.objectivism
Message-ID: <1630@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Jan 90 17:57:46 GMT
References: <8284@portia.Stanford.EDU> <9001162348.AA11695@apee.ogi.edu.> <8321@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 35

In article <8321@portia.Stanford.EDU> harris@portia.Stanford.EDU (Joe Harris) writes:
>As far as I can tell, neither sci.philosophy.tech or sci.philosophy.meta
>is inappropriate for Objectivist postings.

Everyone seems to have forgotten this, but way back when .meta was
first created someone asked about Objectivism there, was told that
the group was inappropriate and that they should try talk.phil.misc,
and that was then end of it.  No endless discussions.

>All the postings to sci.philosophy.tech by Objectivists have been technical,
>scientific expositions, from my postings on the sciences of mathematics and
>physics to other postings on the science of ethics.  I have never understood
>why technical discussions of Objectivism are less appropriate in
>sci.philosophy.tech than those of other philosophies.

Sci.phil.tech is not for technical discussions of philosophy but for
technical philosophy, which is meant to be something else.  Several
people have explained this already.

Some people have pointed out that sci.phil.tech includes philosophy
of science.  (I agree.)  But that doesn't mean that all philosophical
discussion of everything that might be claimed to be a science is
appropriate.

It is far from clear to me that all the Objectivist postings in 
sci.phil.tech have been appropriate.  Consider, for example, the
one entitled "Philosophy and Current Trends in Communist Countries".
The article is basically a political commentary with some philosophy
of history thrown in.  Sure, the article claims philosophical ideas
are the "most important causal factors in history", and the article's
written from that perspective.  But that doesn't make it technical
philosophy.  If it spent more time on this philosophy of history,
maybe it would be; but it doesn't.

-- Jeff