Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and the Logic of Liberty


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Folks, I will be speaking at a meeting of the L.A. Objectivist Network at the home of Bob Balocca in Sherman Oaks, California at 7 pm on Sunday, January 24, 2010. The title of my presentation is "Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and the Logic of Liberty" -- or "The Logic of Liberty," for short. Here is a description of the talk:

With the aid of tetrachotomy diagrams, I will warm up by considering ice cream flavor choices and the ethical issue of sacrifice. Then I will look at two key issues in political economy: 1. economic freedom vs. personal freedom as depicted in the "Nolan chart", and 2. de facto vs. de jure governmental control of the economy. The first issue relates to the political spectrum in the United States of libertarian, conservative, liberal, and "populist" (statist), and the second issue relates to the four fundamental politico-economic arrangements of communism, fascism, capitalism, and a neglected fourth alternative rarely discussed in recent times. The "star of the show" is the logical tool I adapt from Aristotle's Law of Excluded Middle, but Rand comes in for careful scrutiny as well. I critique Rand's own analysis of the difference between conservative and liberal, as well as her characterization of the libertarian alternative (vs. her own Objectivist laissez-faire model)--but I essentially agree with and utilize her characterization of fascism. The neglected fourth alternative may turn out to be the camel's nose under the tent that helps us prevent our current creeping/galloping(?) statist society from going over the cliff -- so it bears more consideration than it has received to date.

This material will be part of my projected book True Alternatives: Clarifying the Great Issues in Philosophy with the Help of Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle. Two other big chunks of the book have already appeared in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies in the past two years, and I am working on two more -- one on the free will vs. determinism issue and one applying Rand's unit-perspective view to the field of logic. How ice cream flavors will fit into all of that is yet to be determined. ;)

REB

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Roger,

Any idea when you new book will be published?

Also, are you publishing your class materials online or in electronic format for possible distribution to those of us who, for some unknown reason, left sunny California and moved to the frozen wasteland of Iowa?

Do you recommend the Objectivist Network mentoring group led by Matt Gerber of The Objectivist Club Network as described in TOS?

Mary Lee Harsha

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Roger,

Any idea when you new book will be published?

Also, are you publishing your class materials online or in electronic format for possible distribution to those of us who, for some unknown reason, left sunny California and moved to the frozen wasteland of Iowa?

Do you recommend the Objectivist Network mentoring group led by Matt Gerber of The Objectivist Club Network as described in TOS?

Mary Lee Harsha

Hi, Mary Lee. Ironically, I grew up in the "frozen wasteland of Iowa" and left it in 1971 to spend about 14 years in Middle Tennessee, only then moving out here to "sunny California." Like Rand, I find the sunshine disgusting, except at sunrise or sunset, when it is frequently gorgeous and inspiring.

My book won't be published for several years, because I have a lot of writing to do. Previously published parts of it can be found in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. I encourage you to support this journal by buying (at least) those back issues, if you are interested in my general approach.

The specific application of it to politics is more accessible and interesting to the general reader, and after I have test-run it a time or two, I may put it up on my web site. I might even do a video of it, perhaps several short clips (10 minute chunks), that I would post as "free content."

So, stay tuned to Objectivist Living, and drop in on my web site from time to time, in case I announce it there first: www.rogerbissell.com. There is a lot of other interesting stuff to read there, too.

Thanks for your interest.

REB

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Thank you for your reply, Roger. I have already contacted the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies about buying those back issues. I think I found the ones that I need. I will continue to watch for your progress. The momentum is becoming very exciting, isn't it?

Mary Lee

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  • 1 year later...

Just a brief note to let interested folks know that I will again be delivering this talk in the L.A. area, this time on Monday, July 18 to the Karl Hess Club.

I have also offered to present it to Free Minds 2011 in Orange Co., California, earlier the same month. I have not yet received an acceptance or rejection from Kate Herrick et al.

I am in the process of revising the presentation into essay form for publication in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. It will also be one or two chapters in my forthcoming book, True Alternatives.

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Just a brief note to let interested folks know that I will again be delivering this talk in the L.A. area, this time on Monday, July 18 to the Karl Hess Club.

I have also offered to present it to Free Minds 2011 in Orange Co., California, earlier the same month. I have not yet received an acceptance or rejection from Kate Herrick et al.

I am in the process of revising the presentation into essay form for publication in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. It will also be one or two chapters in my forthcoming book, True Alternatives.

Roger. you are a scholar. How do you handle the fact that Aristotle made an argument in favor of slavery?

I would not invite Aristotle to my table for dinner. Why? Two reasons:

1. He failed to do a simple experiment to test his assertion that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter bodies. A ten year old kid could have blown that assertion up.

2. He made excuses for slavery. I find this a very hard thing to forgive or forget.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Just a brief note to let interested folks know that I will again be delivering this talk in the L.A. area, this time on Monday, July 18 to the Karl Hess Club.

I have also offered to present it to Free Minds 2011 in Orange Co., California, earlier the same month. I have not yet received an acceptance or rejection from Kate Herrick et al.

I am in the process of revising the presentation into essay form for publication in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. It will also be one or two chapters in my forthcoming book, True Alternatives.

Roger. you are a scholar. How do you handle the fact that Aristotle made an argument in favor of slavery?

I would not invite Aristotle to my table for dinner. Why? Two reasons:

1. He failed to do a simple experiment to test his assertion that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter bodies. A ten year old kid could have blown that assertion up.

2. He made excuses for slavery. I find this a very hard thing to forgive or forget.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al, Aristotle is crucially important for the same reason that the U.S. Constitution is crucially important. And thus, I'd invite Aristotle ~and~ James Madison to my dinner table. I think we'd have some ~very~ interesting discussions.

Aristotle's logic and epistemology provided the conceptual framework for those who later did the observations and experiments that established the nature of gravitational attraction and its expression in a mathematical law. Good methodology trumps preconceived notions and faulty generalizations, and thus Aristotle's own methodology sowed the seeds of his eventual refutation and ridicule by later philosophers and scientists.

While the U.S. Constitution tacitly recognized the institution of slavery, political hot potato that it was, it also provided the legal framework for those who later successfully abolished slavery and some of its most pernicious legal concomitants, such as denial of voting rights to African-Americans and the Jim Crow and other segregation laws. In the hands of the right people, the U.S. Constitution was the means by which slavery was purged from the polity. Some have argued that because "politics is the art of the possible," an open attempt to abolish slavery would have prevented a federal Constitution from being agreed upon. Whether the consequences would have been better than what we have today, I can't say...

Aristotle failed to come out against slavery for a much different reason. He apparently thought slavery was perfectly fine. But he was operating in the context of a much different anthropology and politics than we have had for the past 200+ years in our country. Basically, the ancient Greeks thought their slaves, being barbarians, were not fully human. Also, Aristotle advocated a form of egoism, but he did not have the concept of "rights" in his political philosophy.

Yet, because Aristotle laid down both a logical and an egoistic framework, later thinkers, building on him, knowingly or not, used his more basic ideas as the means for eliminating something less fundamental that he found non-objectionable, but which we, in our far different political-anthropological context of knowledge and value, find abhorent.

And it's true that Aristotle simply repeated the same common-sense belief everyone had, rather than questioning it. But it seems clear to me that he didn't have the same motivation for challenging it that Galileo did. Based on the available observational knowledge, Galileo suspected rightly that there was some principle operating independently of the mass of objects, and testing this required him questioning what (most?) everyone took to be common sense: that heavier objects fall more rapidly than lighter objects. (Actually, this is strictly true only in a vacuum.)

So, while we could excoriate Aristotle and/or the Founding Fathers all day for their failings, I think there is sufficient justification not to. Context matters, and it is really (mostly) anachronistic to blame Aristotle for not being a modern scientist and a consistent advocate of individual rights.

REB

P.S. -- I think you would benefit from and enjoy Peikoff's course "Objectivism Through Induction." He discusses Aristotle quite a bit in this context.

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While the U.S. Constitution tacitly recognized the institution of slavery, political hot potato that it was, it also provided the legal framework for those who later successfully abolished slavery and some of its most pernicious legal concomitants, such as denial of voting rights to African-Americans and the Jim Crow and other segregation laws. In the hands of the right people, the U.S. Constitution was the means by which slavery was purged from the polity. Some have argued that because "politics is the art of the possible," an open attempt to abolish slavery would have prevented a federal Constitution from being agreed upon. Whether the consequences would have been better than what we have today, I can't say...

Thank you for your even tempered and scholarly response.

However the U.S. Constitution as it was written (up through the 12th amendment) failed to deal with slavery and failed badly. What got rid of slavery was a four year war which killed 620,000 Americans (on both sides) and produced 1.5 million maimed and broken Americans in a country with a population of 32 million souls. Relative to todays population that would be a death toll of over 6 million and and population of serious wounded of 15 million. This is comparable to the carnage produced by the Great War. Our constitution had a hole in it from the git go, to wit the matter of slavery. It was cobbled together because the Articles of Confederation left the nation in such bad shape that unless something were done and done soon the nation would have fractured through its own contradictions, which it eventually did even with the constitution of 1787.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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While the U.S. Constitution tacitly recognized the institution of slavery, political hot potato that it was, it also provided the legal framework for those who later successfully abolished slavery and some of its most pernicious legal concomitants, such as denial of voting rights to African-Americans and the Jim Crow and other segregation laws. In the hands of the right people, the U.S. Constitution was the means by which slavery was purged from the polity. Some have argued that because "politics is the art of the possible," an open attempt to abolish slavery would have prevented a federal Constitution from being agreed upon. Whether the consequences would have been better than what we have today, I can't say...

Thank you for your even tempered and scholarly response.

Ba'al, please! Praise of that kind is not good for my reputation here on OL! :-/

However the U.S. Constitution as it was written (up through the 12th amendment) failed to deal with slavery and failed badly. What got rid of slavery was a four year war which killed 620,000 Americans (on both sides) and produced 1.5 million maimed and broken Americans in a country with a population of 32 million souls. Relative to todays population that would be a death toll of over 6 million and and population of serious wounded of 15 million. This is comparable to the carnage produced by the Great War.

Other countries that ended slavery didn't need a horribly destructive civil war to do so. England, for instance. Personally, I think that the Civil War was fought not to abolish slavery, but to "preserve the Union," i.e., to retain control over the Southern states and not allow them to secede, for ~whatever~ reason. I know this is controversial, but I think there has been a good deal of Libertarian and Revisionist writing in support of this point.

Suppose, for the sake of discussion, you conceive of ~all~ of the colonists as "slaves" (i.e., tyrannized subjects) of Britain, and the Revolutionary War as the first Civil War, the result was England with slaves (until well into the 1800s) and an independent United States, no longer "enslaved" to Britain, but still with African-American slaves in both the North ~and~ the South. (Even the Emancipation Proclamation only ended slavery in the ~South~.)

Suppose, then, that we had remained loyal colonies, rather than becoming independent. Would England have been able to force the Southern colonies to give up slavery during the 1800s, as it did in the rest of the Empire -- or would England have thought it in the Empire's "interest" to allow the the Southern colonies to keep that institution? Would the Southern colonies then have rebelled against England? And would the North have joined them or not?

Or, suppose we became independent, and many years later the North had allowed the South's secession to stand. Would the South have held onto the institution of slavery, even when its economic self-interest was gradually showing slavery to be counter-productive? Or, as many speculate, would slavery gradually have faded away? (As it was doing in the North, some states of which ~still~ had slavery at the beginning of the Civil War.)

Interesting counter-factual questions. Lots of grist for alternate history novels and fire-side chats. I just can't say whether things would have turned out better (in regard to loss of life and liberty) if we had stayed united with Britain, or if the North had allowed the South's secession to stand, etc. -- rather than what did happen. It might have been a horrendously bloody mess (for different specific reasons), whichever way history had turned out.

(Speaking of alternate history: a few years ago I came up with an interesting what-if scenario. Suppose the ~North~ had seceded from the ~South~, because a strong Abolitionist-Pacifist wave swept the North and people felt such repugnance at the institution of slavery that they no longer wanted to be politically united to the evil South. But then the ~South~ declared war, to force the ~North~ to remain in the United States, i.e., to "preserve the Union"!)

Our constitution had a hole in it from the git go, to wit the matter of slavery. It was cobbled together because the Articles of Confederation left the nation in such bad shape that unless something were done and done soon the nation would have fractured through its own contradictions, which it eventually did even with the constitution of 1787.

You're absolutely right, Ba'al. I wonder if it wasn't inevitable that our nation would have severely fractured over the institution of slavery, and that huge loss of life and liberty would have happened, either at the outset because of people torpedoing the establishment of an adequate Constitution by intransigently trying to force an unacceptable solution to slavery, or 70 years later after we had kicked the can down the road as far as we could.

The only question is: given that an agreement could ~not~ have been reached to abolish slavery in 1787, would it have been better to force the issue and live with the probable disunity and the high risk of re-conquest and tyranny -- purely speculative, but likely in my opinion -- or to swallow the bitter pill as we did and live with the enormous amount of death and social upheaval that we are all too familiar with?

REB

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Just a brief note to let interested folks know that I will again be delivering this talk in the L.A. area, this time on Monday, July 18 to the Karl Hess Club.

I have also offered to present it to Free Minds 2011 in Orange Co., California, earlier the same month. I have not yet received an acceptance or rejection from Kate Herrick et al.

I am in the process of revising the presentation into essay form for publication in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. It will also be one or two chapters in my forthcoming book, True Alternatives.

UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE

I just got word from Fred Stitt that my talk "The Logic of Liberty: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and the Logical Structure of the Political Spectrum" has definitely been accepted for Free Minds 2011. I will be delivering it on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 12.

I have offered to give a second lecture on the subject at Free Minds 2011. This would incorporate some new thoughts I've had about Rand's 1973 characterization of liberals and conservatives in "Censorship: Local and Express" and how her concept of "malevolent universe" relates to these political ideologies.

If my schedule works out, I may also offer to deliver this lecture to a meeting of the Los Angeles Objectivist Network (LAON) in mid-July. This material will definitely be included in the essay I submit for publication in JARS. The "Logic of Liberty" material is now shaping up as ~three~ chapters in True Alternatives, which is good, since almost all Objectivists like politics, right? :-)

REB

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  • 1 month later...

Just a brief note to let interested folks know that I will again be delivering this talk in the L.A. area, this time on Monday, July 18 to the Karl Hess Club.

I have also offered to present it to Free Minds 2011 in Orange Co., California, earlier the same month. I have not yet received an acceptance or rejection from Kate Herrick et al.

I am in the process of revising the presentation into essay form for publication in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. It will also be one or two chapters in my forthcoming book, True Alternatives.

UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE

I just got word from Fred Stitt that my talk "The Logic of Liberty: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and the Logical Structure of the Political Spectrum" has definitely been accepted for Free Minds 2011. I will be delivering it on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 12.

I have offered to give a second lecture on the subject at Free Minds 2011. This would incorporate some new thoughts I've had about Rand's 1973 characterization of liberals and conservatives in "Censorship: Local and Express" and how her concept of "malevolent universe" relates to these political ideologies.

If my schedule works out, I may also offer to deliver this lecture to a meeting of the Los Angeles Objectivist Network (LAON) in mid-July. This material will definitely be included in the essay I submit for publication in JARS. The "Logic of Liberty" material is now shaping up as ~three~ chapters in True Alternatives, which is good, since almost all Objectivists like politics, right? :-)

REB

FURTHER UPDATE*****FURTHER UPDATE*****FURTHER UPDATE*****FURTHER UPDATE*****FURTHER UPDATE

Kate Herrick has just confirmed to me that my Free Minds 11 lecture "The Logic of Liberty" is now scheduled to be a PLENARY session, set for 9 am on Tuesday July 12. This will be the one and only lecture I deliver to Free Minds 11, and it will incorporate the new material on how Rand's concept of "malevolent universe" applies to liberalism and conservativism.

REB

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  • 3 months later...

Just a reminder: I will be delivering my talk "The Logic of Liberty: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and the Logical Structure of the Political Spectrum" at the Free Minds 2011 Seminar in Anaheim, California. It's scheduled as the 9 am plenary session on Tuesday, July 12.

I'm also delivering it on July 18 at the Karl Hess Club. This should be interesting--trying to tailor my talk for two somewhat different audiences. And eventually, it will appear as an essay in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and later as a chapter in my forthcoming book, In Search of True Alternatives.

In any case, I'm having a BALL getting the Power Point slides and text whipped up into shape and practicing my delivery. I've already given it to two different groups, and the response has been very encouraging and helpful.

My wife, daughter, and I are driving out to SoCal starting this Sunday, and we'll also be visiting with friends and relatives and motoring up to Mammoth Lakes, CA for my annual appearance at the Jazz Jubilee with the Side Street Strutters Jazz Band. We're going to celebrate July 4th by watching the local Elks Club fireworks display in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Long live the United States of America! :-)

REB

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  • 2 months later...

My "Logic of Liberty" talk went very well in California in July. I got a good reception and good feedback from both the Free Minds group (Tuesday July 12) and the Karl Hess Club (Monday July 18).

Chris Sciabarra assured me there would be a place for the essay in Volume 11, No. 2 of JARS, so at his urging, I devoted the month of August to revising it, to include beaucoup footnotes and a healthy bibliography. I sent him the completed manuscript on August 31, and now I am on stand-by, waiting to hear back from the blind peer reader.

In the meantime, I am working toward completion of my JARS essay on the free will/determinism controversy, hoping to place it in Volume 12, No. 1, to be published sometime next near. (It will also be a likely candidate for a proposal to Free Minds 2012 which, if they hold it, will probably be back this way in the Eastern U.S.)

Also, as part of a larger project, I am studying a number of logic texts and treatises, to find out exactly where the Law of Excluded Middle comes into play in a significant way in logical issues. My thought is that, just as the Law of Contradiction is the root of Rand's definition of "logic," the Law of Excluded Middle should be the root of a valid definition of "dialectics," which Chris defines as: "the art of context-keeping," and which I would define as: "the art of non-context-dropping identification of reality."

My efforts to finish work on the "Logic of Liberty" essay were almost derailed by my fascination with this subject, and I probably included more footnote material on it that is justified. But I'm sure the peer reviewer will let me know, if that's the case. :-)

REB

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> I am studying a number of logic texts and treatises

Roger, I think that's a wonderful idea just in itself, especially with regard to textbooks. Great minds think alike: At one time I did a thorough "textbook accumulation" for another subject, but right now I'm buying introductory physics textbooks. It's amazing how different the epistemology was in a textbook from a hundred years ago from one from the last twenty or thirty years. And how much you can learn from the way the same subject is approached by different minds who have a professional and -systematic- interest.

I assume you are reading the texts from a span of at least a hundred years...or longer in the case of logic? Let us know what interesting things you observe, even if it's not about the Law of Excluded Middle.

I think it would be an interesting article just to survey in 'granular detail' how logic has been differently approached - contentwise as well as methodwise - over time.

> there would be a place for the essay in Volume 11, No. 2 of JARS

Do you have any idea how many subscribers there are to JARS or were before it became free?

In my more cynical moments it seems to me that all the 'little' Objectivist-libertarian publications over the years -- Objectivity, JARS, The New Individualist, The Free Radical, etc., etc. -- not to mention hole-in-the-wall libertarian publications seem to want to keep this fact secret out of embarrassment***. I would wonder if JARS, Perigo's publication, etc. has/had more than a hundred or two subscribers. I'm assuming since TNI had a think tank marketing it and a prominent place on the TAS website and an editor like Bidinotto with a dramatic touch, it would have grown to where it was well over a hundred subscribers.

> I am on stand-by, waiting to hear back from the blind peer reader

Did you have to send him a copy in braille? :-)

***indication of lack of success in 'reaching out and grabbing attention and an audience' (outside of the already knowledgeable or convinced) by the Objectivist and libertarian intellectual movements.

Edited by Philip Coates
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Why did the author of the Declaration have slaves? C'mon, Ba'al, we all know that people, even heroic ones, are inconsistent in applying their principles, whether logic or rights. That's part of the *value* of logic--to ferret out contradictions! Also, I'm using Aristotle's *logic,* not his anthropology! (For the same reason that I use Rand's definitions of "perception" and "reason" when discussing fetal and children's rights, rather than her acceptance of the prevailing "anthropology" on the state of infant awareness as perceptual or merely "sensation." The same Jamesian notion distorts and renders useless her writings on music, btw.)

REB

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Why did the author of the Declaration have slaves? C'mon, Ba'al, we all know that people, even heroic ones, are inconsistent in applying their principles, whether logic or rights. That's part of the *value* of logic--to ferret out contradictions! Also, I'm using Aristotle's *logic,* not his anthropology! (For the same reason that I use Rand's definitions of "perception" and "reason" when discussing fetal and children's rights, rather than her acceptance of the prevailing "anthropology" on the state of infant awareness as perceptual or merely "sensation." The same Jamesian notion distorts and renders useless her writings on music, btw.)

REB

You answered a question with a question.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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All right, Ba'al, this question of yours is not relevant to my topic. But I did answer you. Aristotle had a screwed-up anthropology, as did most/all (?) Greeks of his day. If you want to discuss that issue, please start a thread elsewhere. I suggest the title "Aristotle and slavery." But please don't try to hijack this thread. It is about my essay on logic and the political spectrum.

REB

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...I'm using Aristotle's *logic,* not his anthropology! (For the same reason that I use Rand's definitions of "perception" and "reason" when discussing fetal and children's rights, rather than her acceptance of the prevailing "anthropology" on the state of infant awareness as perceptual or merely "sensation." The same Jamesian notion distorts and renders useless her writings on music, btw.)REB

Correction: I meant to refer to Rand's "acceptance of the prevailing PSYCHOLOGY in re the state of infant awareness as not perceptual, but merely 'sensation.'"

In any case, I reject, and do not attempt to defend, faulty scientific views and their application, whether Aristotle's faulty anthropology as applied to the political philosophy question of who legitimately has freedom and whom can legitimately be enslaved -- or to Rand's faulty psychology (borrowed uncritically from William James) as to the cognitive status of infants' awareness of the world around them, or adults' awareness of musical tones.

And Ba'al, thank you for starting up a separate thread on your issue of concern.

REB

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  • 8 months later...

Just to update those who may be interested...

My "Logic of Liberty" talk went very well in California in July. I got a good reception and good feedback from both the Free Minds group (Tuesday July 12) and the Karl Hess Club (Monday July 18).

Chris Sciabarra assured me there would be a place for the essay in Volume 11, No. 2 of JARS, so at his urging, I devoted the month of August to revising it, to include beaucoup footnotes and a healthy bibliography. I sent him the completed manuscript on August 31, and now I am on stand-by, waiting to hear back from the blind peer reader.

There were delays in both the first and second peer readings/reviews of my Logic of Liberty essay, so Chris had to go ahead with Vol. 11, No. 2 back in the winter. The essay is now in editorial review, checking for errant typos and grammatical and syntactical errors, cleaning up citations, etc., and Chris assures me it will be placed in Vol. 12, No. 1 this summer.

In the meantime, I am working toward completion of my JARS essay on the free will/determinism controversy, hoping to place it in Volume 12, No. 1, to be published sometime next near. (It will also be a likely candidate for a proposal to Free Minds 2012 which, if they hold it, will probably be back this way in the Eastern U.S.)

As a result of the delay in completing the editorial process on the Logic of Liberty essay, my free will essay has been on hold and will not appear in JARS until Vol. 12, No. 2 or Vol. 13, No. 1, most likely sometime in 2013. It's all for the good, because I will be able to include some new insights on final causation and human action that I gained from reading Oderberg's book, Real Essentialism.

As for presenting the essay to a summer seminar, that is not likely to happen--at least, not this year. As at least some of you know, Fred Stitt ended his intrepid project of mounting Free Minds summer seminars, which he began after The Atlas Society pushed the pause button on their annual events several years ago. Fred and his assistant, Kate Herrick, graciously made a place for my music and liberty talks in the 2009 and 2011 Free Minds gatherings in Las Vegas and Anaheim, CA, respectively, and I was looking forward to presenting again either this summer or next. But alas, the financial bottom line of the Free Minds seminars was just not good enough to warrant continuation. In the meantime, The Atlas Society has picked up the ball again, but I have not attempted to deal directly with them since 2006 and do not plan to do so again for the forseeable future. If the kind of changes I want to see in TAS actually happen (hopefully sooner than later), I will perhaps reconsider. For now, I am happy whittling away at my ideas and sharing them with audiences and publications that I feel comfortable dealing with.

Also, as part of a larger project, I am studying a number of logic texts and treatises, to find out exactly where the Law of Excluded Middle comes into play in a significant way in logical issues. My thought is that, just as the Law of Contradiction is the root of Rand's definition of "logic," the Law of Excluded Middle should be the root of a valid definition of "dialectics," which Chris defines as: "the art of context-keeping," and which I would define as: "the art of non-context-dropping identification of reality."

My efforts to finish work on the "Logic of Liberty" essay were almost derailed by my fascination with this subject, and I probably included more footnote material on it that is justified. But I'm sure the peer reviewer will let me know, if that's the case. :-)

REB

This "larger project" is still very much alive, but it's more long-range. It's fascinating, and a bit daunting, to see the multiple levels of hierarchy or "nesting" of my various essays within groups of essays that themselves are sections within wider projects. The temptation has always been to "go theoretical" and impose an outline on the whole she-bang right from the outset, but it has been more satisfying to keep tossing out emails and posts and essays and to see the "real" structure emerge from the overall process. Aside from the details and precise titles and number of chapters, though, I can say that the "big book" is going to be structured around showing how the three "Aristotelian" laws of logic and Rand's unit-perspective provide a deep foundation for the three branches of logic, sometimes called "semiotics" (or "sign theory"), "analytics" (regular logic), and "dialectics." The book is already at the point of having to decide what to leave out (assuming it's going to be a one-volume work of reasonable length). I suppose that's a good thing.

REB

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