Atlas Society will hold no Summer Seminar in 2009


Robert Campbell

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Chris, I would strongly suggest buying the Fall 2008 issue of JARS, rather than waiting for Robert C's essay to (perhaps) appear online. We are legally permitted to post our essays 6 months or more after they are published, but I have not posted all of my materials, since some of it I intend to include in a book.

Robert's paper on the arbitrary and my paper on the mind-body problem -- both important essays from the standpoint of the completeness and validity of Objectivism (the closed system version) -- comprise about 150 pages of this new issue of JARS (Fall 2008) that is due out shortly. You would be doing yourself and JARS a favor by supporting the journal. It's not that expensive.

REB

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Chris G,

To follow up on Roger's post, I will make be making my article available online in 6 months. But assuming that the Fall 2008 issue of JARS comes out later this month (as seems most likely), that won't be till late July.

Robert C

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I would say that the first skirmish in the open/closed Objectivist wars was really a fight about psychology and Objectivism. I would say that the open system side won the psychology part of the fight and the closed system side won the Objectivism part of the fight. A lot of what David Kelley wrote that was new and central was that part of positive psychology that could be integrated into Objectivism. The problem is that there are large parts of the new positive psychology that can't be very well integrated with Objectivism and it's a very open question whether Objectivism is wrong or psychology is wrong or that they really are in conflict sometimes and we have to reconcile our psychology. My money is on Objectivism for most of those cases. Robert Campbell probably has the bet on psychology for most of them :-). ARI has actually shrunk down Objectivism quite a bit to those things Rand wrote about philosophy and excludes a lot of her comments on psychology.

Jim,

I think you're on to something here.

But the "fight about psychology and Objectivism" goes back farther than David Kelley's excommunication.

For a very long time, Orthodox Objectivism has had trouble keeping psychologists in the fold. First, Nathaniel Branden was given the boot. After his expulsion, Allan Blumenthal was asked to write the first replacement article ("The Base of Objectivist Psychotherapy"). When Dr. Blumenthal, in turn, left the fold, his writings were also effectively expelled from the canon, so Edwin Locke and Edith Packer were commissioned to write new replacement articles. Edith Packer was run out in the 1990s. So Dr. Locke, now a professor emeritus, is still expected to write replacement articles (as he did recently with a piece on self-esteem in The Objective Standard). Since Edwin Locke has been a major contributor to applied psychology, it is really a shame that the Ayn Rand Institute can't find better things for him to do than restate the same propositions about self-esteem that Nathaniel Branden enunciated over 40 years ago, and provide the same standard defenses of them.

What David Kelley has to say about benevolence and tolerance is broadly consistent with positive psychology (although Positive Psych did not yet exist as a movement in 1989).

I'm assuming that the parts of positive psychology that you object to include the notion that the "meaningful" life is the best kind, centered on a commitment to some religion or other cause bigger than yourself. I'm skeptical of that, and have said so in print.

Positive psychologists also tend to think more highly of forgiveness than Ayn Rand did. Is this one of your other objections? (I take the evidence from Positive Psychology studies seriously, but the study of forgiveness is still very new.)

Anyway, I'm not sure what all of the contentious issues are, so I can't say where all of my bets are placed.

Robert Campbell

Robert,

I didn't mean to put words in your mouth about this topic, so I'm grateful for your gentle correction. Most of what I meant about David Kelley's writings was about Unrugged Individualism, although Truth and Toleration also hits on issues also tackled by positive psychology. I was largely speaking of the conflict between those practices that support happiness and those that support productiveness, pride, justice and other Objectivist virtues.

I think it really is an open question whether total longterm happiness is best served by empirically supported practices that support happiness from a psychological standpoint and those supported by the mainline Objectivist ethical argument. I imagine that the psychological side of it is missing a guide to consistently supporting the pursuit of rational self-interest and the Objectivist side of it is missing a lot of psychological content that touches on control of consciousness issues.

It may be that positive psychology falls within the realm of "optional values" and some people and probably most people in a statistical distribution have to make real tradeoffs between universal virtues and values that should be pursued in some quantity by everybody, but that quantity varies from person to person and each individual faces their own tradeoffs in pursuing their own happiness optimization problem.

I am aware of the constant debates about correspondence vs. coherence theory of truth and Dr. Peikoff's view of the arbitrary, although I will still need to read your essay when it comes out. I simply meant to say that whatever substantive objections people to may have to the treatment of Objectivism in OPAR and elsewhere, it remains the standard for a comprehensive and cognitively economical presentation of the total philosophy. The tensions between those truths that correspond to reality and those that cohere to each other. Given that philosophy is an abstract discipline, there is a natural bias toward coherence over correspondence. That indeed is a problem of integration.

Jim

Edited by James Heaps-Nelson
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I wanted to note also the distinction between pursuing a disvalue or nonvirtue, which is an immoral action (which may or may not have social consequences or consequences of judgment by others depending on the nature of the act) , and choosing to spend time and effort pursuing personal or "optional values" over "universal values". In many cases an "optional value" is objectively necessary for your happiness, but not necessary or even harmful for someone else. For some people, having children is a value for reasons of personal psychology and life circumstance, for others not.

Certain Objectivist virtues such as productiveness and justice are always recognized cognitively, but the wisdom of the active pursuit of such virtues as a value depends on your own objectively determined hierarchy of values which may include many optional, personal values. Rand always made clear that the fundamental basis for the pursuit of virtues was metaphysical and one's own life was the ultimate standard of value.

I've many times been puzzled by many Objectivists' inability to recognize that other Objectivists have different hierarchies of values. That is why I pursue certain actions which are consonant with the furtherance of my values. It is also why I differ with many Orthodox Objectivists on the issue of application of sanction. I recognize their right and justification in applying it based on their personal hierarchy of values, but I choose to eschew many of the concomitant actions like ostracism and very selective nonassocation they practice because I think embracing those practices represent a forfeiture of my independence and an erosion of the recognition of the virtue of independence in the Objectivist movement generally. Incidentally, those practices are not limited to some Orthodox Objectivists.

For me, the pursuit of truth is path dependent. Engagement with as many intelligent people as possible on crucial issues is the only way to do that. There are lots of people I do not associate with, not because I view limited association with them as some sort of sin, but that I do not recognize their intellectual approach as having value (or it sometimes may have disvalue) in my hierachy of values or the pursuit of my interests at any given point in time. I laughed when I saw some Orthodox Objectivists judging Reisman for his association with the Mises Institute. Gasp, he actually wanted to talk to people who knew something about economics. Did they ever ask his purposes in the association or what kind of activities he pursued within that association? The act and ownership of choosing our own purposes is one of the very cornerstones of the virtue of independence.

Jim

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  • 1 year later...

Reviving dead thread--could not resist this, re LP and the objectivist mvmt.

A favourite poem in our family was the immortal "John Gilpin's Ride". All together now, with LP as Gilpin and the Omovement as the horse:

The Horse, which never in such wise

Had handled been before,

What Thing upon his back had got

Did wonder more and more."

Seems just as apt a quote today as ever.

Guys:

I am begging you to just let it go and focus on advancing Objectivism with a tabla raza approach.

This just reminds me of the Star Trek with Frank Gorshen who is one half black on the "right" half of his face!

He and his adversary who is black on the "wrong" half of his face are locked into this past dead dance.

Let us move forward!

Adam

To what? If we wanted to "move forward" we'd all be over at the immutable Ayn Rand Institute. I'm not, in principle, immutable, regardless the consistency of my positions.

--Brant

Again, how does that follow Brant?

Moving forward, in my mind, is to proactively establish schools/local community organizations and other O'Biwan "community organizing structures" to orient folks to rational objectivist approaches to their own self improvement which will lead to the improvement of the community that they live in and allow them to be more productive for their own self interests.

Tip O'Neil, clearly not a Randian ideal, understood that all politics is local.

One aspect that I taught my rhetoric students was define your terms.

I will ask you then to define "move forward" as in what can advance the philosophy of Objectivism throughout the world?

Thank you for your efforts.

Adam

I used quotation marks just because it was undefined (by you in that post--tabula rasa? As for "self improvement" and "'community organizing structures'" I am really dubious). If you want to "advance the philosophy of Objectivism throughout the world" the way you state then you must get into bed with the ARI and its minions or be antagonistic to them and their approach and understanding of Objectivism. That's because of the sheer space they occupy. The latter of course you refuse in your "move forward" so you are stuck with the former. Not necessarily a bad thing; they do a lot of good things. As for me, the only way forward is critical, conceptual thinking in education, which means marginalizing and bypassing public education. Referencing Objectivism per se, it is too immature and grandiose yet for general public consumption. ARI is Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Or: If she said it or wrote it yes, if she didn't, no. Hence, contemning and condemning the Brandens is part of all that, even though it's essentially an attempt to maintain the Peikoffian reins on the Objectivism movement horse.

--Brant

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  • 3 weeks later...

Are your five posts up yet? Will you grace us with your presence tomorrow, jackass?

There's a French absurdist play called Humulus the Mute, about a man who can only say one word a day. He falls in love, and in order to declare his feelings he saves up his words for a month. He pours out his heart, and the object of his affection, realizing that he's been speaking to her, pulls out her hearing aid and says in effect "come again?"

Inspiring, you think?

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