Are you a Libertarian as in of the philosophy of Libertarianism and/or the political party?

This thread is a continuation of the multi-thread project begun here.

In this thread we discuss the essay Commensurablism, in which I finally stop arguing against things and put together what's left after the four previous essays into an overview of my general philosophy. Everything after this will be going into details on particular philosophical topics, with this as the foundation of each of those.

Reminder: I'm looking for feedback both from people who are complete novices to philosophy, and from people very well-versed in philosophy. I'm not so much looking to debate the ideas themselves right now, especially the ones that have already been long-debated (though I'd be up for debating the truly new ones, if any, at a later time). But I am looking for constructive criticism in a number of ways:

- Is it clear what my views are, and my reasons for holding them? (Even if you don't agree with those views or my reasons for holding them.) Especially if you're a complete novice to philosophy.

- Are any of these views new to you? Even if I attribute them to someone else, I'd like to know if you'd never heard of them before.

- Are any of the views that I did not attribute to someone else actually views someone else has held before? Maybe I know of them and just forgot to mention them, or maybe I genuinely thought it was a new idea of my own, either way I'd like to know.

- If I did attribute a view to someone, or gave it a name, or otherwise made some factual claim about the history of philosophical thought, did I get any of that wrong?

- If a view I espouse has been held by someone previously, can you think of any great quotes by them that really encapsulate the idea? I'd love to include such quotes, but I'm terrible at remembering verbatim text, so I don't have many quotes that come straight to my own mind.

And of course, if you find simple spelling or grammar errors, or just think that something could be changed to read better (split a paragraph here, break this run-on sentence there, make this inline list of things bulleted instead, etc) please let me know about that too! — Pfhorrest

You lost your innocense? Are you good at profiling people? You said in the above to form a new opinion based on what everyone sees. I would argue to see what other people sees, a huge part of you must die. Are you familiar with the comedy series on television called "Psych"? The good news you can refind yourself without looking, just simply be kind to people. Some people lose their innocense from being put through too much stress.

After skimming the article and looking at the diagram, my summary of your philosphy is just to be rational and approach things methodically and also ignore alot of the triteness of alot of other "philosophers".

- Are any of these views new to you? Even if I attribute them to someone else, I'd like to know if you'd never heard of them before. — Pfhorrest

You call your philosophy "critical objectivism". Are you aware And Rand called her philosophy objectivism? Is it just a coincidence? If not, why do you not mention how your philosophy relates to Randianism?

If indeed, your goal is to credit previous thinkers when convenient and not make a confused jumble of terminology, it seems to me the first thing to clarify is what you are retaining from previous "objectivists" and where you differ.

Are you a Libertarian as in of the philosophy of Libertarianism and/or the political party? — christian2017

Not as in the American political party, and not in the sense most Americans think of it, but yes most broadly speaking I am libertarian, a libertarian socialist specifically. Why do you ask?

You lost your innocense? — christian2017

Huh?

Are you good at profiling people? — christian2017

Uh, maybe, kinda, but what does that have to do with anything?

You said in the above to form a new opinion based on what everyone sees. I would argue to see what other people sees, a huge part of you must die. — christian2017

Can you elaborate?

Are you familiar with the comedy series on television called "Psych"? — christian2017

Not really. What does that have to do with anything?

The good news you can refind yourself without looking, just simply be kind to people — christian2017

Can you elaborate? Also what does that have to do with anything?

Some people lose their innocense from being put through too much stress. — christian2017

I agree, I think, but what does that have to do with anything?

After skimming the article and looking at the diagram, my summary of your philosphy is just to be rational and approach things methodically and also ignore alot of the triteness of alot of other "philosophers". — christian2017

That is an accurate gloss. I’m basically elaborating on what it means to be properly rational.

You call your philosophy "critical objectivism". Are you aware And Rand called her philosophy objectivism? Is it just a coincidence? If not, why do you not mention how your philosophy relates to Randianism?

If indeed, your goal is to credit previous thinkers when convenient and not make a confused jumble of terminology, it seems to me the first thing to clarify is what you are retaining from previous "objectivists" and where you differ. — boethius

I am aware of Ayn Rand but not drawing anything from her philosophy specifically. There are a lot of different kinds of lower-case “objectivisms” in philosophy, like moral objectivism, which just hold that something or another is objective. I’m just using it in that general sense.

Maybe I should add a little bit of explanation for each of the terms of that I am for, like I had for each of the terms I used for the things I’m against in previous essays. “Objectivism” isn’t the only one that has some ambiguity; “liberalism” definitely does too, and probably the others as well.

I am aware of Ayn Rand but not drawing anything from her philosophy specifically. There are a lot of different kinds of lower-case “objectivisms” in philosophy, like moral objectivism, which just hold that something or another is objective. I’m just using it in that general sense. — Pfhorrest

Since Randianism is a popular faction in US style Liberterianism, then "objectivist" is making a strong association.

If you don't want that association, empirical is the more normal philosophical word for drawing conclusions from what we normal would call an "objective view of reality".

"Moral objectivism" is basically an oxymoron.

Though it can make sense to say one is trying to be "objective about the moral implications of a situation", it is usually agreed there is no objective procedure to arrive at moral values (comparable to the objective procedures found in empirical science), and so unless you are advancing that there are in fact objective procedures to resolve moral questions, which you don't seem to be doing, then using objective to describe values may lead to confusion for your readers.

That there are, nevertheless, absolute moral truths ("true" answers about, at least the foundational, moral questions), and though there may not be an objective procedure any two clear headed people could use to come to an agreement about there that there is nevertheless either other ways to the truths or truths nonetheless even if we can't get to them, is usually simply called "moral absolutistism" which is opposed to "moral relativism". Moral absolutists will accuse moral relativists of believing that moral relativism itself is a claim purporting to be absolutely true and thus a moral absolutist disposition, just in denial about it (a debate which goes back to Hellenistic skepticism as previously mentioned, though only on principle and without a cultural relativistic element of modern relativists).

Moral relativism should not be confused with pluralism, which is simply the observation by moral absolutists that it is not incompatible with a common sense approach to culture (that cultural diversity is not intrinsically bad nor is it intrinsically incoherent for moral absolutists to respect different cultures insofar as they represent an attempt to get closer to the absolute truths that do exist).

As for the word critical, essentially every philosophy will claim to pass critical scrutiny, so it's not really describing any particular philosophy as such, just the critical thinking method generally of considering the positions available; which for philosophical debate, such as in this forum, is usually a shared premise. The question of course is what positions do pass critical scrutiny.

Although you aren't asking for criticism of your content, I would recommend thinking hard about how to know a position is extreme without relation to the status quo, and, second, if there is any reason to believe some truths are not extreme relative the alternatives, either because it is a legitimate binary question and only two extremes available or then the truth simply happens to lie on some global maxima of a topological space of possibilities.

If you don't want that association, empirical is the more normal philosophical word for drawing conclusions from what we normal would call an "objective view of reality". — boethius

Empiricism is the descriptive face of what I more generally call "phenomenalism", not "objectivism". The descriptive face of "objectivism" would be "realism". You can be an anti-empirical realist (like supernaturalists), or an anti-realist empiricist (like subjective idealists).

I do define what I mean by these things in the essay:

In being against nihilism, I say to hold that there is some opinion or another that is actually correct in a sense beyond merely someone subjectively agreeing with it, a position that I call "objectivism". [...] And in being against transcendentalism, I say to reject any opinion that is not amenable to questioning because it is beyond any possible experience that could test it one way or another, a position that I call "phenomenalism". [...] This commensurablist approach to reality may be called "critical empirical realism", as realism is the descriptive face of objectivism, empiricism is the descriptive face of phenomenalism, and [...]

"Nihilism" and "transcendentalism" being defined in detail in the previous essays on those topics, to include relativism, idealism, egotism and solipsism within "nihilism", and supernaturalism, the moral analogue thereof, and two senses of "materialism" within "transcendentalism".

unless you are advancing that there are in fact objective procedures to resolve moral questions, which you don't seem to be doing — boethius

...did you actually read the essay? I am definitely doing that.

With regards to opinions about morality, commensurablism boils down to forming initial opinions on the basis that something, loosely speaking, feels good (and not bad), and then rejecting that and finding some other opinion to replace it with if someone should come across some circumstance wherein it doesn't feel good in some way. And, if two contrary things both feel good or bad in different ways or to different people or under different circumstances, commensurablism means taking into account all the different ways that things feel to different people in different circumstances, and coming up with something new that feels good (and not bad) to everyone in every way in every circumstance, at least those that we've considered so far. In the limit, if we could consider absolutely every way that absolutely everything felt to absolutely everyone in absolutely every circumstance, whatever still felt good across all of that would be the objective good. In short, the objective good is the limit of what still seems good upon further and further investigation. We can't ever reach that limit, but that is the direction in which to improve our opinions about morality, toward more and more correct ones. Figuring out what what can still be said to feel good when more and more of that is accounted for may be increasingly difficult, but that is the task at hand if we care at all about the good. This commensurablist approach to morality may be called "liberal hedonic moralism", as moralism is the prescriptive face of objectivism, hedonism is the prescriptive face of phenomenalism, and what I would call a critical-liberal methodology is more commonly called just "liberal" as applied to theories of justice.

Though maybe your weird understanding of the word "objective" is throwing you off of that.

You seem to want to use the word "absolute" to mean what I'm using "objective" to mean, and while you're not alone in that (there is a lot of confused terminology in this area), "absolute" is also used often in contrast to what is sometimes called "situational" ethical models, where the "absolutist" says that certain kinds of actions are always right or wrong, while the "situationist" say that whether an action is right or wrong depends on the context of the situation, but for any particular action in any particular situation there is still an objective (universal, mind-independent, non-relativist) answer to whether that is right or wrong. I am not an absolutist in that sense, and don't want to be mistaken for one, so since there are other words besides "absolute" for the thing that I do support, like "objective", I prefer to use those.

I did notice when writing this that I do use the word "absolute" as a synonym for "objective" at a few places in this essay though, so I've fixed that now. Thanks for indirectly bringing that to my attention.

As for the word critical, essentially every philosophy will claim to pass critical scrutiny, so it's not really describing any particular philosophy as such, just the critical thinking method generally of considering the positions available; which for philosophical debate, such as in this forum, is usually a shared premise. The question of course is what positions do pass critical scrutiny. — boethius

Yes, I'm not talking about whether a philosophy itself passes critical scrutiny, but about whether that philosophy says to apply critical scrutiny to things. As I said:

In being against fideism, I say to hold every opinion open to questioning, a position that I call "criticism".

Where again, "fideism" is defined in more detail in the earlier essay on that subject. (Which is linked from this essay when first mentioned).

Although you aren't asking for criticism of your content, I would recommend thinking hard about how to know a position is extreme without relation to the status quo, and, second, if there is any reason to believe some truths are not extreme relative the alternatives, either because it is a legitimate binary question and only two extremes available or then the truth simply happens to lie on some global maxima of a topological space of possibilities. — boethius

I never say that positions at or near one end of a particular spectrum can't be the case, just that they likely aren't, in which case the process of narrowing in on them looks like Hegelian "spiral-shaped" progress. The narrowing-in is a process of whittling away extremes in any case: like in most of science, we progress by refining the upper and lower bounds of possibility, narrowing the range where the truth might still lie.

...did you actually read the essay at all? I am definitely doing that. Though maybe your weird understanding of the word "objective" is throwing you off of that. — Pfhorrest

I did read your essay, but not carefully as you're only desiring feedback on where the ideas come from, or then to identify them as new, according to your OP, and am happy to help.

A careful reading would also require reading all the previous essays where you define your terms, as you mention above. Again, I'd be happy to look into carefully if that's what your post was about. What I wouldn't be happy about is making some effort and then having the response "ah, am only looking for grammar feedback at the moment".

You seem to want to use the word "absolute" to mean what I'm using "objective" to mean, and while you're not alone in that (there is a lot of confused terminology in this area), "absolute" is also used often in contrast to what is sometimes called "situational" ethical models, where the "absolutist" says that certain kinds of actions are always right or wrong, while the "situationist" say that whether an action is right or wrong depends on the context of the situation, but for any particular action in any particular situation there is still an objective (universal, mind-independent, non-relativist) answer to whether that is right or wrong. I am not an absolutist in that sense, and don't want to be mistaken for one, so since there are other words besides "absolute" for the thing that I do support, like "objective", I prefer to use those. — Pfhorrest

That's why I say "if you don't want to associate yourself with Rand and the 'objectivists' " you could use the term absolutism. Sure, you'll have to clarify that you mean absolute truths in terms of principles not physical actions regardless of the situation (as essentially all absolutists agree on).

However, if you want to keep to the word objectivist, my first comment was:

it seems to me the first thing to clarify is what you are retaining from previous "objectivists" and where you differ. — boethius

You can of course do neither, perhaps as a wink and a nod to the other objectivists that you're building some meta theory that will in the least empathize with their desire to be taken seriously in the critical thinking community, but you do that at the risk of these sorts of edge-wise witticisms built up over several comments. It's a choice, depending on what you want to achieve.

I did say in response to your first response in this thread:

Maybe I should add a little bit of explanation for each of the terms of that I am for, like I had for each of the terms I used for the things I’m against in previous essays. “Objectivism” isn’t the only one that has some ambiguity; “liberalism” definitely does too, and probably the others as well. — Pfhorrest

I just haven't had time to do that yet this morning.

Also you maybe missed an edit I made right after posting that one bit, where I said "I did notice when writing this that I do use the word "absolute" as a synonym for "objective" at a few places in this essay though, so I've fixed that now. Thanks for indirectly bringing that to my attention."

I did read your essay, but not carefully as you're only desiring feedback on where the ideas come from, or then to identify them as new, according to your OP, and am happy to help.

A careful reading would also require reading all the previous essays where you define your terms, as you mention above. Again, I'd be happy to look into carefully if that's what your post was about. What I wouldn't be happy about is making some effort and then having the response "ah, am only looking for grammar feedback at the moment". — boethius

I am looking first and foremost to know if my positions are being communicated clearly, which does depend on reading the text carefully, including everything that it's built upon. If you are willing to do that, I would appreciate it. A cursory reading that seems not to understand, but only because it was a cursory reading and not through unclear writing on my part, just gives me false negatives.

Just a conversation. This entire forum is just banter, ridiculing (i don't care about the spelling), and conversation.

I am looking first and foremost to know if my positions are being communicated clearly, which does depend on reading the text carefully, including everything that it's built upon. If you are willing to do that, I would appreciate it. A cursory reading that seems not to understand, but only because it was a cursory reading and not through unclear writing on my part, just gives me false negatives. — Pfhorrest

As you may suspect, I'm not going to invest the time to carefully read your essays only to try to trace the lineage of each of the ideas presented.

There are many participants on the forum that have a very good grasp of the history of philosophy, that they are not investing their time either, but you're feedback is mainly from people with not much more knowledge of the subject matter as yourself, who you then debate with all while denying you want to debate, you should perhaps view as an indication that your request is not very reasonable.

A cursory reading, however, should provide plenty of positive identification as well as false negatives, that you can then look into.

And if you're interested to make you writing robust, you are well served by looking into both the positives, false negatives, false positives as well as the positively negative, to then not only (perhaps) learn from those thinkers mentioned but also to be able to report back where you stand with relation to those thinkers.

For instance, you know And Rand is fairly popular in libertarian circles; simply positioning yourself clearly (moreover if you want to retain the word objectivist) will make things much clearer and easier for anyone wanting to engage with your material.

Other authors you may want to look into is, obviously, Kant.

Kant's transcendental idealism is constructed precisely to be able to manage an absolutist (or objective if you insist) view of truth from a position of limited knowledge. Which seems a similar view as to what you are trying to build.

While dealing with the problem of things relating to situations; if all moral truths, even absolute, relate only to one particular situation and no relations between those moral truths, then it's difficult to conceive of finding such an infinite list of moral principles for each conceivable situation. Therefore, the truths, if any, that we could possibly find must transcend all situations and be universally applicable; again, from our position of limited knowledge, the categorical imperative Kant advances as the principles to judge other principles. Without transcendent principles, even if we have a moral truth for a particular situation it's very difficult to actually verify we are actually in such a situation, and if no moral principles transcend many situations, then even slight differences in situation may render a moral principle invalid; i.e. even if we do know some moral principle matches some situation we cannot know at one point a modification of that situation invalidates the principles without either the complete infinite list of principles or then some rules to apply our principles (i.e. principles that transcend all situations); and, given that situations do not remain static but change with time, if we do not know the domain of the validity of a principle then it's essentially useless. I don't remember Kant making such an argument explicitly (though I wouldn't be surprised if he did), but it's a problem his philosophy solves.

As a Kantian, my main motivation in reading your work carefully would be to defend Kantianism against your attacks on transcendentalism. Precise philology and history of ideas does not interest me so much, just to know enough to understand a broad spectrum of key references to be able to get up to speed on any particular arguments, so as to then get as quickly as possible into it's intrinsic merits or faults.

Of course, you don't need to use the usual philology references, it just makes it longer to understand for someone familiar with philosophical material. Making your own terminology is fine, though may actually take more time in debates than the initial investment of the most understandable terminology.

However, since you asking for where the ideas may originate from I'd recommend you at least feign interest in the subject matter of your own OP, rather than just insist people read everything very, very carefully whenever you hear something other than praise.

Since you seem very insistent you're against transcendentalism, it would be useful, if your purpose is to clarify your ideas for critical scrutiny, to simply state a position clearly relative to the most famous transcendentalist (and of course relative your interpretation of Kant's transcendentalism, of which many are readily available).

Another word you use is pragmatism. Again, reading and positioning yourself relative to pragmatists such as Locke and Dewey would be a useful exercise. Since pragmatism is something you seem definitely for and not against, this may also be fruitful ground to develop your position further.

As you may suspect, I'm not going to invest the time to carefully read your essays only to try to trace the lineage of each of the ideas presented. — boethius

As I said, I am not just trying to trace lineages, or even primarily looking for that. The very first thing I ask for is:

Is it clear what my views are, and my reasons for holding them?

If someone is not giving a charitable read but just taking a quick glance and making a knee-jerk reaction based on isolated words they skimmed, that doesn't actually tell me if the words I actually wrote, assembled the way I wrote them, as a whole, are clear.

For example, you apparently saw the word "objectivism", and wondered if I meant Randianism, when I say right there when I first use it (in this essay) what I mean by it, and it's clearly not Randianism.

And if you're interested to make you writing robust, you are well served by looking into both the positives, false negatives, false positives as well as the positively negative, to then not only (perhaps) learn from those thinkers mentioned but also to be able to report back where you stand with relation to those thinkers. — boethius

I have been. If you'd actually followed any of the other threads so far, you'd see I've been making lots of subtle changes to try to clear up misconceptions that have been revealed. I even made a small change based on you already today, and have planned for a larger one to do later, that I already told you about, twice.

And I usually have read most of the other thinkers mentioned. I have a degree in philosophy. And I am trying to report back where I stand with relation to them, where necessary and appropriate. That's the other large part of these review threads: asking for where people think it's necessary or appropriate, besides where I've already done it. That's what you keep calling "tracing lineages", so you obviously know I'm aiming to do that.

For instance, you know And Rand is fairly popular in libertarian circles; simply positioning yourself clearly (moreover if you want to retain the word objectivist) will make things much clearer and easier for anyone wanting to engage with your material. — boethius

I already said, three times now, that I do plan on adding a bit of disambiguation about the word "objectivism", and I will mention Rand in it, precisely because you brought it up. That was useful feedback of the kind I'm looking for, and I think I already said thanks for that, but if not, thanks for that.

Other authors you may want to look into is, obviously, Kant.

Kant's transcendental idealism is constructed precisely to be able to manage an absolutist (or objective if you insist) view of truth from a position of limited knowledge. Which seems a similar view as to what you are trying to build. — boethius

I have read Kant. He is a major influence on me. He is possibly my favorite philosopher. I still disagree with him in many respects.

While dealing with the problem of things relating to situations... — boethius

I'm not going to respond to this at length here, but the short of it is that yes, you need some general principles with which to make particular judgements, and that's in large part what I hold philosophy to be all about, and I will go into much greater detail about that later. I only brought that up to point out that "absolutism" is an ambiguous word. So is "objectivism", but it has more overlap with what I mean than "absolutism", so I picked that one.

As a Kantian, my main motivation in reading your work carefully would be to defend Kantianism against your attacks on transcendentalism.

...

Since you seem very insistent you're against transcendentalism, it would be useful, if your purpose is to clarify your ideas for critical scrutiny, to simply state a position clearly relative to the most famous transcendentalist (and of course relative your interpretation of Kant's transcendentalism, of which many are readily available). — boethius

The transcendentalism I am against is what Kant called "transcendental realism", which he is also against; that plus the moral analogue thereof. The very start of my essay Against Transcendentalism says:

I am against something that I will call "transcendentalism" for lack of a better term. "Transcendent" in general means "going beyond", and the word has many different senses in philosophy and other fields, but the sense that I'm using here is as the antonym for "phenomenal" or "experiential", so this sense of "transcendent" means "beyond experience" or "beyond appearances". Half of the kind of transcendentalism that I am against is what Immanuel Kant called "transcendental realism", which he also opposed, in contrast to what he called "empirical realism"...

Of course, you don't need to use the usual philology references, it just makes it longer to understand for someone familiar with philosophical material. Making your own terminology is fine, though may actually take more time in debates than the initial investment of the most understandable terminology. — boethius

All kinds of words used throughout philosophy are used in a bunch of different ways by different writers in different places and times (I say that right in my text, as you can see quoted above). The best that we can do is try to use one in a way that's as unambiguous as possible and then say specifically what exactly we mean by it when we use it. Which I do.

A difficulty I face here is that, when putting forth new ideas, even if they are combinations of existing ideas, I have to either make up new words to name them, or use words that have some existing sense that is appropriate, even if it might have other connotations I don't want in narrower contexts.

My position that every question, both about reality and about morality, has answers that are not subjective, mind-dependent, relative, etc, I call "objectivism", because "objective" is generally contrasted with subjective/mind-dependent/relative/etc, and doesn't have the problems of other possibilities like "realism" (which when applied to moral questions would imply a reduction of morality to reality, conflation of ought with is) or "absolutism" (as already explained).

My position that opinions, beliefs, intentions, etc, don't need to be justified from the ground up before we're warranted to hold them, but instead must only be absent reasons to discard them, I call "liberalism", because it means we're free to hold those opinions, and when it comes to intentions, that is the usual literal sense of the word, meaning you don't have to preemptively justify your intentions, you can just do what you want, unless there's some reason not to. I know there are political connotations of that word in some contexts, but what better word is there for the position that I advocate? In epistemology specifically, I could (and do) say "critical rationalism", but this is a more general principle of which critical rationalism is a specific instance.

My position that every opinion should be subject to questioning I call "criticism", even though that obviously has a number of other uses, because other alternatives like "skepticism" or "rationalism" often have connotations that I specifically argue against (namely, the justificationist connotations that my position called "liberalism" are opposed to).

You see the problem here? Would you rather I just made up words in some invented Elvish language or something?

However, since you asking for where the ideas may originate from I'd recommend you at least feign interest in the subject matter of your own OP, rather than just insist people read everything very, very carefully whenever you hear something other than praise. — boethius

I don't think I've heard any praise at all yet. (Apologies to anyone who did, if I forgot you already). Most of what I've heard is people objecting to things I didn't say, or wondering about things I already answered in the text. The appropriate response to either of which is to read more carefully. How can you possibly have a productive conversation with someone who doesn't hear the things you do say, and does hear things you didn't say?

And what do you mean by "feign interest in the subject matter of [my] own OP"? I clearly am interested in my own writing, which is the subject of the OP. And in the things I'm writing about. And in other people who have written things about what I'm writing about, many of whom I have already read. What more are you asking for?

Another word you use is pragmatism. Again, reading and positioning yourself relative to pragmatists such as Locke and Dewey would be a useful exercise. Since pragmatism is something you seem definitely for and not against, this may also be fruitful ground to develop your position further. — boethius

I have studied Locke, and Dewey, and James, and Peirce. Though Locke long predates the latter three, who were the first pragmatists, so I'm not sure why you're including him as a pragmatist. In any case, I am heavily influenced by them, Peirce more so than the others.

I really don't get where you're coming from.

You say:

I am looking first and foremost to know if my positions are being communicated clearly, which does depend on reading the text carefully, including everything that it's built upon. If you are willing to do that, I would appreciate it. A cursory reading that seems not to understand, but only because it was a cursory reading and not through unclear writing on my part, just gives me false negatives. — Pfhorrest

Now you say:

I already said, three times now, that I do plan on adding a bit of disambiguation about the word "objectivism", and I will mention Rand in it, precisely because you brought it up. That was useful feedback of the kind I'm looking for, and I think I already said thanks for that, but if not, thanks for that. — Pfhorrest

Seems straight up contradictory.

What's the purpose of this discussion about the discussion? If my feedback is useful -- to a point you'll add a disambiguation in your text, based on the point I bring up -- then why not want more of it?

I mentioned Rand because you used the term "objectivism", which is closely associated with Rand. Why not just provide the disambiguation and move onto the next point. I mentioned absolutism as an alternative label, which you agree can mean exactly the same thing as what you mean by "objectivist"; I didn't argue that you "need" to do that, just offering an alternative if you don't want to disambiguate with Randianism.

As I said, I am not just trying to trace lineages, or even primarily looking for that. The very first thing I ask for is:

Is it clear what my views are, and my reasons for holding them? — Pfhorrest

I did not miss this point, I just agree with you that lineage of ideas is the quickest way to make your ideas clear, which is why I ask how you relate to such-and-such thinker that seems to have similar ideas (such as the Hellenistic philosophers in their discussion on skepticism, in the previous essay).

All kinds of words used throughout philosophy are used in a bunch of different ways by different writers in different places and times (I say that right in my text, as you can see quoted above). The best that we can do is try to use one in a way that's as unambiguous as possible and then say specifically what exactly we mean by it when we use it. Which I do. — Pfhorrest

I disagree here. Though it's not an important point as I don't mind if people makeup their own terminology, but the more social conventions used (relative a given community the discussion is taking place in) the faster you can be understood. Using no conventions would be basically inventing a new language; sure, doable and linguists could figure it out, but the effort is enormous. Using the language of the forum, in this case English, is obviously a much faster way to be understood on the forum, and using philosophical conventions and jargon is another way to speed things up (but not as much of a speedup compared to using English rather than some entirely invented language; hence, the not caring so much in principle, just that since you want to disambiguate, what words are arguably "the best" is a useful debate).

I don't think I've heard any praise at all yet. (Apologies to anyone who did, if I forgot you already). — Pfhorrest

Terrible fan service, but I'm not going to tell you how to run your business.

However, my point didn't mention what you do when hear praise, only my observation of your behavior when you hear something other than praise.

My point is that your OP is an unreasonable demand if you want to do something other than collect people's cursory impressions, but actually want to argue with people the substance.

If you want to debate the substance, just post the essays and defend your ideas against criticism. Most likely the lineage commentary would come about as a side-affect in any-case.

If you don't want to do that, however, it's simply unreasonable to demand other forum participants read through everything very carefully and accuse them of not reading or understanding as a basis to dismiss their feedback; you could just say "hmm, I may look into referencing that thinker" or "don't see a reason to mention that thinker; can't mention them all".

I'm mentioning what seems relevant thinkers who are associated with your arguments, since that's what you're asking. There's nothing to debate about other than your idea that "only a careful reading won't produce false negatives" which you then immediately disprove yourself: my cursory reading has already produced a double negative positive that you plan to integrate. If you just answer the questions on face value (i.e. ah no, not trying to go in Rand's direction at all, I'll clarify that), you'd can just get more feedback without getting into an argument about the quality of the feedback.

I have studied Locke, and Dewey, and James, and Peirce. Though Locke long predates the latter three, who were the first pragmatists, so I'm not sure why you're including him as a pragmatist. In any case, I am heavily influenced by them, Peirce more so than the others. — Pfhorrest

For instance, above is a perfectly reasonable response to my feedback and question. Otherwise, it's much more difficult to know what you mean by pragmatism if you don't position yourself relative an existing pragmatists (for all I know you are just taking the word from common speech and making an entirely new "pragmatism" out of it without even knowing the word was coined by a philosophical school to begin with; something that happens all the time, so by referencing heavy influences it's much clearer where you're trying to go).

As for Locke, why would I assume you dismiss previous thinkers? Maybe you feel "Locke" got it more essentially right than later pragmatists, or then just later additions were not really resolving anything important. Likewise, that you think Locke is entirely irrelevant is also informative (that presumably Dewey and Pierce are making essential and critical reformulations and additions). I cannot possibly know without asking. That's why I'm formulating my comments as questions.

I really don't get where you're coming from. — boethius

Next time just tell him "great job little buddy!"

I really don't get where you're coming from.

You say: [...]

Now you say: [...]

Seems straight up contradictory. — boethius

I'm looking for more than just one thing here. There's literally a bulleted list of them in the OP. I'm interested primarily the first, but also in the second. You seemed upset that I was asking people to read closely just for the second. I clarified that close reading is more needed for the first, which I care more about than the second.

What's the purpose of this discussion about the discussion? If my feedback is useful -- to a point you'll add a disambiguation in your text, based on the point I bring up -- then why not want more of it? — boethius

I'm just replying to the things that you say here. My first response to you was short and to the point, saying I'm not meaning to associate with Ayn Rand but to use a more general sense of the word "objectivism", and that I would think about adding a disambiguation to avoid that confusion:

I am aware of Ayn Rand but not drawing anything from her philosophy specifically. There are a lot of different kinds of lower-case “objectivisms” in philosophy, like moral objectivism, which just hold that something or another is objective. I’m just using it in that general sense.

Maybe I should add a little bit of explanation for each of the terms of that I am for, like I had for each of the terms I used for the things I’m against in previous essays. “Objectivism” isn’t the only one that has some ambiguity; “liberalism” definitely does too, and probably the others as well. — Pfhorrest

And then you replied to just the first part of that, ignoring the second, and said a bunch of other stuff too, and I've just been replying to you since.

Though it's not an important point as I don't mind if people makeup their own terminology, but the more social conventions used (relative a given community the discussion is taking place in) the faster you can be understood. — boethius

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I'm saying that the conventions are not consistent, and I am trying to use the least-ambiguous ones possible, but necessarily have to add clarification about what exactly I mean since there isn't one absolutely unambiguous word for the thing that I mean.

I added a couple examples right after writing the previous post, which you might have missed:

A difficulty I face here is that, when putting forth new ideas, even if they are combinations of existing ideas, I have to either make up new words to name them, or use words that have some existing sense that is appropriate, even if it might have other connotations I don't want in narrower contexts.

My position that every question, both about reality and about morality, has answers that are not subjective, mind-dependent, relative, etc, I call "objectivism", because "objective" is generally contrasted with subjective/mind-dependent/relative/etc, and doesn't have the problems of other possibilities like "realism" (which when applied to moral questions would imply a reduction of morality to reality, conflation of ought with is) or "absolutism" (as already explained).

My position that opinions, beliefs, intentions, etc, don't need to be justified from the ground up before we're warranted to hold them, but instead must only be absent reasons to discard them, I call "liberalism", because it means we're free to hold those opinions, and when it comes to intentions, that is the usual literal sense of the word, meaning you don't have to preemptively justify your intentions, you can just do what you want, unless there's some reason not to. I know there are political connotations of that word in some contexts, but what better word is there for the position that I advocate? In epistemology specifically, I could (and do) say "critical rationalism", but this is a more general principle of which critical rationalism is a specific instance.

My position that every opinion should be subject to questioning I call "criticism", even though that obviously has a number of other uses, because other alternatives like "skepticism" or "rationalism" often have connotations that I specifically argue against (namely, the justificationist connotations that my position called "liberalism" are opposed to).

You see the problem here? — Pfhorrest

My point is that your OP is an unreasonable demand if you want to do something other than collect people's cursory impressions, but actually want to argue with people the substance.

If you want to debate the substance, just post the essays and defend your ideas against criticism. Most likely the lineage commentary would come about as a side-affect in any-case. — boethius

I'm not asking people to read carefully for the lineage stuff, but for the clarity of the ideas presented. And I do eventually want to debate the ideas, when they are ones that are actually my own original ideas, or little-known ones, which is why I'm asking what ideas are new to people.

What I don't want is for every attempt to talk about anything to be immediately interrupted by a repetition of some argument that has been going on for 2000 years. If I'm saying something that's old to you and has already been argued to death, I've probably also heard whatever argument you're about to make in response, I'll probably address it later, and I don't want to derail the whole conversation getting into that right away.

Yeah, hes a testy little fellow. Doesn't like to have just a nice little conversation — christian2017

I'm not upset about anything, I just don't follow what you're talking about, and how it relates to this conversation.

ok

I'm not sure i have any suggestions for Commensurabilism. Seems more valid then most of the typical alternatives.

Thanks.

I'm looking for more than just one thing here. There's literally a bulleted list of them in the OP. I'm interested primarily the first, but also in the second. You seemed upset that I was asking people to read closely just for the second. I clarified that close reading is more needed for the first, which I care more about than the second. — Pfhorrest

Re-read the conversation. You say first that I'm not reading carefully to give good feedback (to avoid false negatives), then that I'm not paying attention to your first point of whether your reasons are clear or not, then that my feedback is in fact useful, and finally that careful reading is only needed for the first point, which I've already stated is very much related to the others.

My basic point in my last comment is that criticizing my feedback is a completely useless exercise. There's just no point to it. Engage with my feedback if you find it useful or ignore it if you don't.

And then you replied to just the first part of that, ignoring the second, and said a bunch of other stuff too, and I've just been replying to you since. — Pfhorrest

Well this is what happens when you want to both criticize my feedback and form grounds to dismissing it ... but also engage with it simultaneously. You can't do both effectively.

I'm not asking people to read carefully for the lineage stuff, but for the clarity of the ideas presented. And I do eventually want to debate the ideas, when they are ones that are actually my own original ideas, or little-known ones, which is why I'm asking what ideas are new to people. — Pfhorrest

Well is "eventually" mean now or eventually. You should make this clear in the OP.

What I don't want is for every attempt to talk about anything to be immediately interrupted by a repetition of some argument that has been going on for 2000 years. If I'm saying something that's old to you and has already been argued to death, I've probably also heard whatever argument you're about to make in response, I'll probably address it later, and I don't want to derail the whole conversation getting into that right away. — Pfhorrest

You make it pretty clear you want to know where the ideas you present might come from, if they're over 2000 years old, that's simply the case. The Hellenistic philosophers were amazingly sophisticated thinkers, there's no reason to dismiss them; in particular if you're interested in the history of ideas and where your ideas can be traced to.

If debates have been going for more than 2000 years, probably they are about something pretty relevant. If you're familiar with them, it's a lot more efficient to just say where you are positioned in relation to them, then assume that I'm able to assume that you already know these arguments and assume that I'm furthermore able to deduce where you stand in relation to them and also just assume that you'll get around to commenting on them later but that for now it would be a waste of time.

Now, if you want to stop discussing the discussion and get more into the substance, I will review your substantive points and respond to them in a bit.

You say first that I'm not reading carefully to give good feedback — boethius

That was far from the first thing I said. The first thing I said was just to answer your question about my relationship to Rand / use of the word "objectivism", and comment that I should add such a clarification to the essay itself. (I didn't have time yet this morning. I've since done that already by now). That was engaging positively with your initial feedback. Anything else that's happened since then has been on you; I'm just replying to you when you keep coming back to this. As far as I was concerned this could have been dropped after that first reply.

careful reading is only needed for the first point, which I've already stated is very much related to the others — boethius

Where have you stated this? I haven't seen you address the first point ("Is it clear what my views are, and my reasons for holding them?") at all.

Well is "eventually" mean now or eventually. You should make this clear in the OP. — boethius

In the OP I say "I'm not so much looking to debate the ideas themselves right now, especially the ones that have already been long-debated (though I'd be up for debating the truly new ones, if any, at a later time)."

I'm trying to get the presentation of my argument clear, before field-testing it. You wouldn't complain that a prototype of a product isn't being sent to market yet "because the designer is afraid it won't sell" or something. Duh, it's a prototype. It's not done yet. I'm looking to tighten up the design first, and then bang on it to see if it stands up to vigorous use later.

You make it pretty clear you want to know where the ideas you present might come from, if they're over 2000 years old, that's simply the case. The Hellenistic philosophers were amazingly sophisticated thinkers, there's no reason to dismiss them; in particular if you're interested in the history of ideas and where your ideas can be traced to.

If debates have been going for more than 2000 years, probably they are about something pretty relevant. If you're familiar with them, it's a lot more efficient to just say where you are positioned in relation to them, then assume that I'm able to assume that you already know these arguments and assume that I'm furthermore able to deduce where you stand in relation to them and also just assume that you'll get around to commenting on them later but that for now it would be a waste of time. — boethius

This is, again, conflating two different things.

On the one hand, I want to know if I have neglected to mention prior sources of the same ideas I am putting forward. So mentioning ancient Hellenes is useful in that case (though just "Hellenistic philosophers" in general isn't specific enough to be a useful mention in the text, which is why I didn't incorporate that from your previous comments, but I appreciate that you were trying to be helpful there).

On the other hand, for example, when I mention the Euthyphro argument as a paradigmatic case of my form of argument against appeals to authority, I'm not interested in having that immediately derailed into some long argument about medieval counterarguments in support of divine command theory. That would be a discussion-consuming tangent off of one small part of the much broader topic under consideration, and would probably not be a productive discussion since it's one that's been going on for ages and it's likely that nobody would have anything new to say on the topic.

I want to save that kind of actual debate for ideas that are genuinely new. Which first means being sure that what my ideas are is communicated clearly, and then identifying which if any of them are genuinely new.