Posted by E. LeBaron on August 04, 19101 at 22:14:00:

In Reply to: Re: A Critique of Objectivism posted by Josh Verden on July 29, 19101 at 15:50:06:

Ryan's work is easily the best technical critique of Rand's epistemology I've come across. He basically seems to be saying that Rand didn't know her stuff and made a lot of errors that are obvious to people well-read in philosophy, such as her confusion about nominalism. Rand's lack of philosophical expertise and her poor scholarship (academic philosophers have stessed to me these shortcomings in Rand) are fair game for critics. There are problems with Ryan's critique. He critiques her from an impossible position, i.e., from an "Objective Idealist" point of view, i.e., from neo-Hegelian premises. The problem with idealist philosophers is that they try to discover the foundations of the universe in their own minds. Many of Ryan's criticisms rest on the unstated premise that knowledge can only be knowledge of ideas or universals, and never of a non-mental external reality. He thinks the idea of matter is ridiculous and unnecessary because he finds it inexplicable that matter could become conscious (the unstated premise here is that anything "inexplicable" cannot exist). I think the real force of Ryan's criticisms stem from the fact that Rand's epistemology is so sketchy and so poorly thought out that it is not equipped to refute a very intelligent objective idealist like Ryan. But I would not say that Ryan has totally refuted Rand or proved the validity of "objective idealism." To be sure, his critique is important and admirers of Rand ignore it at their peril.

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• Re: A Critique of Objectivism Scott Ryan 18:51:05 9/20/101 (0)

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