 What are the differences of any between Locke and Rand? Is there any reason she only mentions Aristotle as inspiration as opposed to Locke? Yes, I think. And I don't know how much she actually read of Locke, but she doesn't think of politics as fundamental in philosophy. She did write about that, so that Locke is really good in political philosophy and is innovative in certain important ways in political philosophy. He's certainly giving voice to the age, but he's not only given voice to the age, there's many ideas in Locke that you don't find in that form and somewhere else, I think. So he contributes to positive views in political philosophy. But his deeper philosophy is flawed to say the least. And his metaphysics and epistemology are, they push towards skepticism, which is what happened in English philosophy after a lot became more and more skeptical and by the time you get to Hume, it's skepticism to the essence of what is happening. And so one thing I ran set about Locke, which I think is true and what you have to get from her perspective, how damning it is. Locke doesn't have a conception of existence, that everything for Locke in the end is in the mind. He has no conception of an existence that's independent of the mind. It's a something we know not what. And the root of objectivism is the embrace of the axiom that existence exists. And if you have a philosopher who doesn't even have the concept of existence, for Rand's perspective on that is like you've lost before you began. You've obliterated philosophy. And even if you do things that are important in political philosophy, that I'm Rand's drawing inspiration from that, that's not how she thinks. Whereas in contrast, Aristotle is worse than Locke in political philosophy. But he's the, I mean, she thinks of it rightly as the founder of logic, of a proper epistemology, and of an embrace of existence that Plato tells you the whole life is oriented to a supposed other world, which is non-existence. And Aristotle tells you no, your life should be oriented to this world that exists independently from you, but you're able to know it. And to her, yeah, like that's what objectivism is about. And so if she's asked the, who are you building on? She's building on Aristotle, not Locke. So is there anything, is his epistemology any good? Well, so there's elements of it that are really good. So there's elements that he understands the process of reason and in contrast to the way a faith-based mind operates, there's really insightful things in Locke about this. So he's a real enlightenment figure who takes reason seriously, but it's when you get to a philosophical account of how reason works, it's all wrong from Rand's perspective. And not, it's, he gets a few things wrong. It's from Locke's perspective, you're not aware of reality and you can't conceptualize. So it's... Why do you think it is that all the quote, modern philosophers of primacy of consciousness in some deep sense? Because it's very hard to formulate a primacy of existence view. So... So why are they not... Well, it's... Christianity? No, it's a really difficult philosophical problem. It doesn't seem difficult. Until you try to actually articulate the view. And then it's... So one way of looking at it is that there's some, there's a common sense and correct perspective that, look, I'm obviously aware of a world that's external to me. But when you start to ask, how does that... So explain how this works. It's... Well, there's these things external to me that are impinging on my senses. And then a single gets transmitted. And I mean, at the time of Locke, they don't know very much about it. But it's like something, there's an optic nerve and it gets transmitted. And then you're aware of the final product. So you're aware of some effect on you. But the object's not an effect on you, like the object's out there. So you're aware only of its effects. So you're only indirectly aware of the object. What you're directly aware of is some effect in your mind. But then there's a question of, if you're aware of an effect in your mind, how do you even know there's stuff out there? And it's... So at some level, it's like, this doesn't make sense. But how do you even account that makes sense? And they can't formulate it. And if you read, I mean, early modern thought from Descartes to Hume, this is the central problem. That they can't understand, at some level, sciences of our world external to us. But we can't explain how we have an awareness of a world external to us. And the Hume skepticism in effect is like, from philosophy's perspective, you don't know anything external to you. But from a common sense perspective, you obviously do. So there's something wrong with philosophy. And to what extent does Darwin shed light on that question? And to what extent do you think that had an impact on Rand? I don't think Darwin sheds light on that question. Because it's already... It's crazy to think you don't have awareness of an external work. Because the whole problem is formulated as there's stuff out there that's impinging on me. You couldn't even formulate a problem if you didn't know about it. So there's something deeply incoherent. But this is what they came to experience, that this can't be right, but we can't figure out what's right. And what Kant does is say, yeah, what's going on is, we're not aware of the external world. There's no reason even to think we should be or could be. And so he goes on to say in effect, no, it's not crazy. It's the way things are. And I think Darwin has an impact on Ein Rand, even though I don't think she ever talks... I don't know of anywhere where she talks about it. But she has an impact on in the realm of morality, I think, not epistemology. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. 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