(no subject)
This is an argument to establish the relation between what is commonly called the real and the ideal.
Sciaberra in his radical Rand book notes that: "Lossky characterized his intuitivist philosophy as an integration of idealism and realism.", pg 45. Lossky was Rand's philosophy prof in university. Rand's unification of the mind/body dichotomy which she related back to Pythagoras accomplishes Lossky's dream. Mind/body integration comes from the unity of the real with the ideal. As with all fundamental integrations, the unity of ideal and real involves the problem of incommensurables. There is no common unit of measure between the real and the ideal, they are as different as ordinal and cardinal numbers, one perspective can be integrated to change, the other cannot. Things change, once unified they don't. My finger is changing as I gaze at it, blood is in motion, nails growing. When I think of my finger in the abstract, within that context there is no change. OK, I'm playing with you, mathematics has solved the problem of how to integrate ordinal and cardinal numbers and this is the same problem so, if we apply the same reasoning to the concepts 'real' and 'ideal', philosophy will finally reverse Pythagoras.
When Pythagoras reified numbers he effectively reified 'units', ie, confused the thing with its idea. Consistent with Rand's view that a concept and a number are both based on a unit when you attribute something to one you effect both. You may only know about the one, but the hard fact is that you get the effect on both. In the case of Pythagoras, mathematics realized they had a problem, epistemology did not. To be fair, the world didn't have explicit knowledge until Rand, but they had the same evidence. When Egypt taught that the calendar year was three hundred and sixty days long it was efficient for ease of calculation but wrong. Adding a five day festival at the end of the year was inductive progress, but over four years still wrong enough to miscount by one full day, more or less. Leap year is an idealized conceptual adjustment to render an ever changing relation into something that holds still long enough to use it.
Sciaberra in his radical Rand book notes that: "Lossky characterized his intuitivist philosophy as an integration of idealism and realism.", pg 45. Lossky was Rand's philosophy prof in university. Rand's unification of the mind/body dichotomy which she related back to Pythagoras accomplishes Lossky's dream. Mind/body integration comes from the unity of the real with the ideal. As with all fundamental integrations, the unity of ideal and real involves the problem of incommensurables. There is no common unit of measure between the real and the ideal, they are as different as ordinal and cardinal numbers, one perspective can be integrated to change, the other cannot. Things change, once unified they don't. My finger is changing as I gaze at it, blood is in motion, nails growing. When I think of my finger in the abstract, within that context there is no change. OK, I'm playing with you, mathematics has solved the problem of how to integrate ordinal and cardinal numbers and this is the same problem so, if we apply the same reasoning to the concepts 'real' and 'ideal', philosophy will finally reverse Pythagoras.
When Pythagoras reified numbers he effectively reified 'units', ie, confused the thing with its idea. Consistent with Rand's view that a concept and a number are both based on a unit when you attribute something to one you effect both. You may only know about the one, but the hard fact is that you get the effect on both. In the case of Pythagoras, mathematics realized they had a problem, epistemology did not. To be fair, the world didn't have explicit knowledge until Rand, but they had the same evidence. When Egypt taught that the calendar year was three hundred and sixty days long it was efficient for ease of calculation but wrong. Adding a five day festival at the end of the year was inductive progress, but over four years still wrong enough to miscount by one full day, more or less. Leap year is an idealized conceptual adjustment to render an ever changing relation into something that holds still long enough to use it.