First some quotes:
Ayn Rand:
“Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.”
“Man is Man.”
Tim Allen:
“It all depends on your level of analysis.”
First of all, “man is man” seems too simplistic. What would you call a dead body? Is that still a man, or is a man not a man after death? Some people might consider it, corporally, still a man, while others may point out that it is inanimate, and therefore not a living, breathing, thinking human. What if you took one end of a leaf (i’m imagining an oak leaf from the tree in my front yard) and placed one end in liquid nitrogen and lit the other end on fire? what if a leaf was green on one side and red on the other? One person would see the leaf from one side and conclude it to be green, and the other would conclude it to be red. This reminds me of a children’s story from my youth about two friends who are standing on opposite sides of a street who see a man walk down it with a different-color jacket on each side, and the two friends get into an argument about the color of the jacket. Or, if you wish me to state it in a simpler language, say you baked a cake and ate a slice. You’ve got the rest left. Anyway, Ayn Rand and I have two different levels of analysis. Just because Ayn Rand has probably never considered a leaf placed in liquid nitrogen on one end and lit on fire on another, she jumps to the conclusion that it can’t happen. This is not to say that I think anything is possible, just that extraneous circumstances must be considered. I remember reading an anthropology assignment about a people in Africa that recognize only three colors instead of the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple that our society has agreed upon: reddish, orange-yellow-chartreuse, and blue-violet. They’re obviously seeing the same wavelengths of light as we are, but here’s where Tim’s quote comes in: it all depends on the level of analysis. No observation is made without the mind of the observer. And in the case of this specific African society, the observers have chosen (whether they realized it or not, I’d guess not) that when they were analyzing the system, they recognized only three colors, and it apparently worked out pretty well for them. Maybe Ayn didn’t consider that because she was too busy eating other peoples’ cakes. It does seem pretty damn stupid to point out that the little examples she made to illustrate her philosophy don’t necessarily hold up true. Who would ever want to pour liquid nitrogen on one side of a leaf and set fire to the other half, anyway? But since they don’t necessarily, that nullifies her conclusion of an objective reality. It’s really not a very well-thought out concept, in my opinion. But that’s because she didn’t take opinions into consideration. For example, If I just went up to an objectivist and said, “you’re wrong,” does that, in itself, destroy their whole philosophy?
Aarushi: “Ayn Rand seems like a bitch!”
