Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!husc6!rutgers!topaz!ll-xn!mit-amt!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decwrl!glacier!well!ptsfa!vixie!dwyer From: dwyer@vixie.UUCP Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Dwyer's Response to Templeton on Objectivism (parts 2 & 3 of 9) Message-ID: <151@vixie.UUCP> Date: Sat, 27-Sep-86 11:34:59 EDT Article-I.D.: vixie.151 Posted: Sat Sep 27 11:34:59 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 21:45:33 EDT Reply-To: dwyer@vixie.UUCP (Bill Dwyer) Distribution: world Organization: Vixie Enterprises, San Mateo, CA Lines: 82 A Response to Brad Templeton's Criticisms of Objectivism by William Dwyer (parts 2 and 3 of 9) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article is a response to Brad Templeton's article 624@looking.UUCP, posted a few months ago. My response is very long, and so will be posted over a period of about a week. Copies of any portion of the response, or of the original article, are available upon request. Editorial assistance was provided by paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul A. Vixie) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "PROBLEM 2: Consciousness is an irreducible primary." Templeton disagrees: Well plain and simple, it isn't. Time is a more fundamental concept, since you can't be conscious or reason without time. Thought requires transition from state A to state B, and transition is a function of time. This criticism arises from a failure to focus on what Objectivism means by stating that consciousness is an "irreducible primary", a statement which does not mean that there are no preconditions for consciousness. Consciousness re- quires a brain and sense organs. It also requires something (an external world) to be conscious of. Objectivism certainly does not endorse what it terms "the primacy of consciousness" -- which is the view that consciousness is metaphysically the ruler and controller of existence -- but rather the "primacy of existence" which is the view that consciousness is metaphysically dependent on, and its content determined by, existence. In other words, according to Ob- jectivism, existence can get along without consciousness, but consciousness cannot get along without existence. In this sense, existence not consciousness is metaphysically primary. What Objectivists mean by saying that consciousness is an "irreducible primary" is that one cannot analyze or "prove" consciousness as such. Any attempt to "prove" it is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to prove consciousness by means of unconsciousness -- since "proof", strictly speaking, is a process of derivation from other evidence. This does not mean, of course, that conscious- ness cannot be "validated". One validates its existence by showing that cons- ciousness is epistemologically inescapable -- that one must use consciousness even in the process of any attempt to deny it. "PROBLEM 3: Time violates the law of identity." Templeton states: "That all things have a specific nature seems to imply to Objectivists that all things are finite. For to be infinite is non-specific." He then states: "But if time is finite then there is a boundary to existence [which] boils down to existence did not always exist. ... I'm not sure why but Objec- tivists seem to get real upset with that statement. They conclude that time must be infinite, and then decide that time does not exist in the same way that other things do, and thus needn't have a specific nature." To begin with, Objectivism does not maintain that time is infinite. Nor does it hold that time has no specific nature. It's position, along with Aristotle's, is that time is the measurement of motion. For example, if we say a job took eight hours, we mean that the process of the job was eight twenty- fourths the rotation of the earth. In other words, time is a certain relation- ship which the motion of one thing bears to the motion of another. As such, time is a function of existence, and therefore presupposes an already existing universe. Of course, the universe (meaning existence) has not existed for a finite period of time, because existence had no beginning. To have a beginning, it would have had to come into existence out of nothing, and from nothing comes nothing. In that sense, the universe always existed -- meaning that it existed (in some form) for all of time -- because time itself depends on the universe. That does not mean, however, that the universe existed for an infinite period of time, because if we say that something exists "for a period of time", we mean, once again, that its motion bears a certain relationship to the motion of another object. That relationship must be finite, otherwise the relationship would make no sense: it would have no identity. Besides, since the universe is literally everything, it can have no relationship to anything else -- nei- ther a temporal one nor a spatial one. Things in the universe can have tem- poral and spatial relationships, but the universe as a whole cannot. The universe as a whole cannot be said to have existed for any period of time. It is literally timeless, in other words, "eternal" (which does not mean "infinite in time" but "out of time").