In which I attack Randist rhetoric by an analogy with Fundamentalist Theists'

I recorded this video before Azrienoch uploaded his and he is being much clearer about metaphors than I am, but I'll post it for the comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms5AD0pzaZc

I’ve been having several arguments with Randian Objectivists, some on my videos against objectivism some on other videos.

At one point, I decided to give up and then he told me this inspiring comment: “Your philosophy is destroying America, which is the only reason I have to try to convince you.” And then “you still remain corrupting human progression, and enhancements to our way of life, by wasting your time questioning whether knowledge is possible”.

My first thought was “hey, I’m Canadian”

And my second one “That’s his final argument? But this is, potentially word for word, a fundamentalist theist argument”.

This argument, that I could call the appeal to America’s integrity, consists of finding your enemy and saying that the way he thinks will destroy America, well America as they want it to be. It is most often brought against the enemies who indeed do want to change America and in some sense destroy one vison of America, but in no way these opinions are a threat: they are the only way not to fall in immobilism.

The appeal to America’s integrity was often pushed forward against Atheists, threatening America as desired by the Fundamentalist Christians. It sure has been brought against Communists and this might be linked to why Randists use it, but still nowadays, fundamentalist Christians use it.

Then I pushed further this comparison and realised that the opposition between Post-modernists and Randists had many more parralels with that between scientists and fundamentalist Theists than only the “Threat to America” attack.

But before I bring them, I will anticipate this weak argument: how can I link Postmodernists and Scientists together?

I have had the impression that Randists think that post-modernists deny science. Maybe some do, but most are probably limited to doubting its validity, its objectivity, its possibility, its completeness, or its connection to Truth in an absolute sense. Not any one who’s already enjoyed the pleasures of modern life would honnestly think that science is something we should stop and few would be able to say that it is not worth continuing, if only just in case.

One way to look at the philosophy of science is to view it as a meta-scientific peer-review: when someone thinks of something that would change all we know, some try to prove it and some try to infirm it until we are able to pronounce ourselves in a widely accepted way: this is what’s happening with M-theory: they’ve thought things in a new way, some work on either side and we shall know with further developments. The same happens with philosophy of science: some work on either sides and try to prove their stuff.

I remain on my “useful” stance about science: even if it is not a way to truth or objectivity and even if it is invalid, impossible and incompletable, as long as it promisses me an interesting future, I’d like to see.

If philosophy of science is a form of peer-review, does that hinder doubting science working on peer-reviewing? That’s an interesting line of thoughts that I am not here to follow today: my point is only that post-modernism, even if it might doubt of some views of science, is not to be seen as its opponent, but more like the ultimate peer-review.

This is therefore why I will allow myself to link Postmodernists and Scientists together in this analogy while at the same time linking Randists and Fundamentalist Theists.

While the scientists are under constant peer-review, religious stand under the immutable word of god and those who speak in his name. Also, while post-modernist philosophers constantly discuss their ideas, randists unite under the immutable word of Rand and those who speak in her name.

Fundamentalists claim to know because they have faith; they don’t really need to question themselves.
Randists claim to know because they have reason; they don’t really have to question themselves neither.

Scientists and postmodernists agree that further research and development will probably prove present knowledge wrong and improve it; fundamentalists and randians don’t: they already know all they need.

Scientists claim that religion is most probably wrong and leads to dangerous ideas, while fundamentalists claim to be 100% right. Postmodernist philosophers say that objectivism is most probably wrong, while randists claim to be 100% right.

Appart of these examples, there are also similarities in the type of rhetoric that fundamentalists and randists use.

Maybe you’ve seen the theists asking random college students questions about evolution and concluding from their ignorance that evolution was wrong. Similarily, MrCropper takes comments from artists of postmodernist architecture and conclude from their metaphors that the philosophy of postmodernism is wrong.

Parenthesis: This tactic is easy to disprove in itself by another analogy with the punk movement. At the start, the punk movement was a rejection of the society of consumption and the machine of the capitalist world. Then, from the message arose two partly independant things: the music style and the fashion. Both are called punk for their origin and socio-cultural unity.

Now, say we took a bunch of teenage girls dressed in punk and asked them what they thought about the machine. Could we really use their probable incapacity to answer properly as an evidence that the message of punk is wrong? I don’t think so. Actually in the case of punk, I’d say that the fact that the machine has grown to englobe the style is an evidence for the factuality of its message.

So in the case of evolution, ignorance of atheists is not an argument; in the case of punk, ignorance is even an indirect evidence for its message. Therefore, I don’t see how some post-modernist artists talking artistically has anything to do with the content of postmodernist philosophy.

But not only is centering on these metaphors a bad argument, I even say it is argument from personnal ignorance. Just because Fundamentalists cannot or want not understand science does not make science wrong and just because Randists cannot or want not understand metaphors does not make metaphors wrong.

When someone displays blatant ignorance of science, you are better to tell them to go take a course, because science requires more involvement than reading a bible. And when someone displays blatant ignorance of litterary references, you are better to tell them to go read great litterature, because it requires more involvement than reading Atlas Shrugged.

So, since they cannot understand, they also argue over built up strawmen: Fundamentalists make Goobber the atheist sound as they hear atheists talk and a Randist cannot see that the post-modern generator is not representative of all postmodernist litterature.

I am not defending here the postmodernist texts that are pure nonsense, because there are nonsensical writers in all areas of knowledge, but I do say that nonsensical postmodern-like texts do not disprove subjectivism and most ideas shared by postmodernists.

I’ll end this video with a last parralelism: the moral appeal to consequences. Just like fundamentalists oppose to atheism because there will be no ground for morality, randists oppose to subjectivism for the same reason. Both fail in the same ways: first, neglecting the fact that there might effectively be no objective morality and that wanting it does not create it.

And second, the fact that exactly as scientists can tell theists that science does not disprove morality but just mean that it’ll be at least harder than reading it in a book, postmodernists can tell randists that postmodernity does not disprove morality, but just means that it’ll be at least harder than reading it in a book.