Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!sri-unix!hplabs!qantel!vixie!dwyer From: dwyer@vixie.UUCP (Bill Dwyer) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Dwyer's Response to Templeton on Objectivism (part 9 of 9) Message-ID: <155@vixie.UUCP> Date: Wed, 8-Oct-86 00:08:32 EDT Article-I.D.: vixie.155 Posted: Wed Oct 8 00:08:32 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 11:01:48 EDT Reply-To: dwyer@vixie.UUCP (Bill Dwyer) Distribution: world Organization: Vixie Enterprises, San Mateo, CA Lines: 131 A Response to Brad Templeton's Criticisms of Objectivism by William Dwyer (part 9 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 9: All the old standards." Templeton states: I'll complete this posting by citing some of the more common questions you will probably have heard: You know your senses and your brain edit incoming information. How can you retain certainty with this knowledge? But if I can't retain any certainty, then how can I know that my senses and brain edit incoming information? He asks, "How can you retain certainty with this knowledge?" My question is: How can I have knowledge without any cer- tainty? And if I lack knowledge, then I also lack the knowledge required for doubting my knowledge, in which case, I have no basis for doubting it. His ar- gument is self-refuting, because it turns on the knowledge that one's senses and brain edit incoming information -- knowledge which the argument itself simultaneously repudiates. In fact, the senses provide information; they don't distort information. It is true that they provide a limited amount of information, but that does not mean that one cannot be certain of the information that is provided. Certainty does not require omniscience. For example, my education is limited, because my teachers edited their instruction. In teaching me arithmetic, they omitted geometry; in teaching me geometry, they omitted calculus. Does that mean that I cannot add and subtract or calculate the area of a triangle? I think not. Furthermore, if the senses prevent us from knowing anything, than they prevent us from being conscious of anything. What then are we conscious of? Non- existence? But non-existence does not exist; it is nothing. And a conscious- ness conscious of nothing is a contradiction in terms. If it is conscious of nothing, then it is not conscious; and if it is not conscious, then it is not a consciousness. Are we conscious only of our consciousness? "A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms. Before it could identity itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something [other than itself]." Consciousness presupposes consciousness of existence; it presupposes knowledge of reality. To be sure, we can err in our judgments about what reality is. However, such error is not the fault of our sensory ap- paratus, but derives from a failure properly to organize our sensory material. Besides, the concept of error itself presupposes knowledge of reality; it presupposes knowledge of something to be in error about. Templeton quotes Rand: "A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms. Before it could identity itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not ex- ist, what you possess is not consciousness." He answers: What if the so-called "external" reality perceived is inexorably linked to consciousness? If the external reality perceived were inexorably linked to consciousness, then that reality would be a part of consciousness, in which case, consciousness would be conscious of nothing but itself -- which is impossible for the very reasons that Rands gives in the passage Templeton quotes. What Rand means in that passage is that if one were conscious of nothing but one's own act of consciousness, one wouldn't be conscious to begin with, because an act of cons- ciousness is always OF SOMETHING. Thus, in order to be conscious of one's act of being conscious, one would have to be conscious of one's act of being cons- cious OF SOMETHING, and that something would then be something other than the act of consciousness itself. Templeton quotes Rand: "Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value." He answers: "You mean works of fiction like `Atlas Drugged?'" [sic] One must be capable of appreciating the context in which a statement is made if one wishes to criticize it. Works of fiction are certainly real as works of fiction, and do have value. Obviously, the characters are not real people, but then they do not have value as real people either. (That is not to say, of course, that if Rand's heroes existed, they would not be valuable human be- ings.) What Rand means by her statement is that honesty is the recognition of the fact that there can be no value in faking reality in order to evade it's conse- quences, since the consequences will obtain irrespective of whether or not one chooses to acknowledge them. For example, a drug addict may evade acknowledg- ing the consequences of his actions, but he cannot escape the consequences themselves. Here again, the primacy of existence is of paramount importance. Templeton quotes Rand: "Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality." He answers: What about errors of knowledge concerning breaches of morality? What is morality but knowledge of a moral code. Is a person who commits immoral acts because he hasn't fu