[Hank Kerchief]

The concept, "universals," is a useless and confusing concept first interjected into the body of philosophical thought by the mystic Plato. It is a synthetic concept like the phoenix or unicorn, completely devoid of objective meaning. The concept of universals must be relegated to the trash heap of junk concepts along with phlogiston, animal magnetism, and ectoplasm.

[Hank Kerchief]

PHILOSOPHY PING

(If you want on or off this list please freepmail me.)

Hank

[robertpaulsen]

"One of the most important of Ayn Rand's contributions to the field of epistemology ..."

Epistemology? Isn't that where they make than incision, you know, when a woman is giving birth? What does Ayn Rand have to do with that?

[Publius]

A = A bump.

[Doctor Stochastic]

A banana is a banana because it has the necessary qualities of "banananess," and a cow is a cow because she has the necessary qualities of "cowness." Everything has its necessary qualities, humans, mountains, dogs, and books, the necessary qualities of which we call humanness, mountainness, dogness, and bookness.

This seems wrong, humanness, mountainness, dogness, and bookness would more accurately be called classifications given by people to these objects. None of them are qualities or properties of an object. Were these really properties, there would be distinct classifications of for mountainness, hillness, mesaness, butteness, molehillness, etc. (Dogness, wolfness, coyoteness, etc.; bookness, codexness, scrollness, pamphletness, etc.)

[Taliesan]

Let me sum up the article: universals have no function. Plato created them...just because. Aristotle worked with them...just becasue. They persist...just because.

It's a superficial article. Universals are like the phoenix. They emerge from the language perennially. If you are going to dismiss them, you might want to comment on the universal tendency to perceive them with something more profound than a sniff.

[D-fendr]

In it she explains how the world we are conscious of is comprised of an infinite complexity of existents, events, and relationships and why it is not possible for us to comprehend this complexity simply by perceiving it. To understand it, we must "break it up," into manageable pieces we can identify and understand. This, Ayn Rand explains, is the role of concepts.

And thus she disappears non-conceptual knowledge. He philosophy falls to a performance error: We can know"warm" even if we have no concept-name for it. Concepts are abstractions of the experience of the thing itself, not the only way we can know.

As for "universals," like absolute values, they are beyond the tool of logic to know, therefore Ayn claims they don't exist - even though she and every human being who gets up in the morning either knows absolute values, assumes them, or acts as though they exist.

Rand is great, up to a point. Past that point she makes rookie errors in philosophy. Rationalism, positivism was debunked within 50 years of its birth.

[cornelis]

The concept, "universals," is a useless and confusing concept first interjected into the body of philosophical thought by the mystic Plato.

Hank, why should a mystic bother with universals? BTW, it was Aristotle (a favorite of Rand, I've been told) who used "katholou" (universal) a word you won't find in Plato. Which word do you have in mind for Plato's "universal"?

[js1138]

Looks like one of those neverending threads...

[tet68]

They can have my phlogiston when they pry it from my cold
dead hands!

Such verbose nonsense.
Probably a student of chomsky.