Randians

 

If you scratch the surface of a Randian scholar, and they believe what they preach, and they do, then you are dealing with someone that views the world as they want to see it, not as it is.

 

They are atheists and pure physicalists. They accept the law on noncontradiction. Their ontology is monotheistic: All there is, is this material world. And we can see it as it is, and then come up with accurate sense impressions, that we apprehend as clear concepts, to which we can apply clear, concise meaningful terms. Then we can form judgments about what we have learned and name. We can now syllogize and reason deductively to gain more knowledge about the world.

 

This world of one substance is not permeated or undercut by skepticism, emotions, dual or many substances or irrational insights, hunches, contradictions, idealism, God, nominalism and competing epistemologies. Those are all nonexistent and metal fantasies, mental and irrelevant.

 

As an epistemological ontologist, I disagree with the Randians: spirit and matter are the two substances constituting the universe and both are real and unreal, and both can be encountered and understood rationally and misunderstood, and described in distorted ways by the mixed up perceiver.

 

I am an ethical moderate. I believe that good and evil exist as ontological forces at work inside and outside of each person, every day forever. I think that the logic of the world must be a blend of mostly Aristotelian logic but also Hegelian dialectical logic.

 

I side with the Randians on most things most of the time, except for their fanatical, purist slant on their positions. As an ontological, ethical, epistemological, and logical moderate, I like their logic and pure ontology more than not, but believe the existentialists have something important to add to. I like the Randian love of the objective world and their whole-hearted optimism about the possibility of seeing and naming the nature of the world of noumena as it is, or at least with high probable certainty.

 

I would add God and the Good Spirits into the mix as the deities and angels to be prayed to, obeyed and worshipped as rational religionists.

 

The Monists of the other extreme, the extreme Idealists, that avow that only the world of spirit or essences exist and are real, that the world of physical objects and concrete things is just an illusion or Maya. These Irrationalists are too anti-reason and the Randians are too pro-reasoning. I want us to use reason more than feeling, whim or sentiment but these sources of connection and communication to the divine are important too.

 

Reason is naturally more mixed and impure and moderate and spiritually good, and sentiment is natural, purer, of just one substantial makeup, wholist, and spiritually bad.

 

I am a Randian too, with some heavy duty Mavellonialist  exceptions to be added to the philosophical mix.