Yaron Brook was scheduled to speak at an Ayn Rand Society session


Robert Campbell

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A memo to the members of the Ayn Rand Society, dated February 26, 2012, announces this upcoming session:

The programs for academic year 2012-2013 are both, broadly, on the theme of the moral basis of capitalism (including the relationship between philosophy and economics [December 2012] and the justification of limited government [March 2013]). Here are the programs, with biographical information regarding the panelists for the December 2012 meeting.

December 2012 Eastern Division ARS Meeting

Topic: The Moral Basis of Capitalism: Adam Smith and Ayn Rand

Speakers: James R. Otteson (Yeshiva University)

Yaron Brook (Ayn Rand Institute)

Chair: Tara Smith (University of Texas at Austin)

Location: Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta GA

Date and Time: December 27th-30th (precise date and time tba)

James R. Otteson received his BA from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD from the University of Chicago. He is now joint professor of philosophy and economics at Yeshiva University in New York. His published works include Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Actual Ethics (Cambridge, 2006), the latter of which won the 2007 Templeton Enterprise Award. He is currently under contract with Cambridge working on a book tentatively entitled “The End of Socialism.”

Yaron Brook received his MBA and his PhD in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is contributing author to Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism (Lexington Books, 2009), and co-author of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea (Paradigm Publishers, 2010) and Free Market Revolution, How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2012). A former finance professor, he speaks and writes on such topics as the causes of the financial crisis, the morality of capitalism, and ending growth of the state.

Tara Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where she holds the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism and is the Anthem Foundation Fellow. She is the author of Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (2006), Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (2000), and Moral Rights and Political Freedom (1995), as well as numerous articles, primarily focused in moral, legal and political philosophy.

The December 2012 session was subsequently cancelled, for unstated reasons.

Since Yaron Brook is by no stretch of the imagination a philosopher, the mere planning of such a session strongly confirms that ARI has taken over the Ayn Rand Society.

My source on this, as on the present status of "Fact and Value" for ARI and the Anthem Foundation, is Irfan Khawaja.

Robert Campbell

Note added September 3, 2012: I see from another thread today that I overlooked an announcement of this session by Stephen Boydstun, at http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10150entry157466.

Mr. Boydstun made no remarks about the choice of Yaron Brook as a speaker.

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This is not good news, is it?

Or, am I missing something here. I was not active during the Objectivist wars, so I do not have a good sense of what this means, other than an emotional dread which may not be a valid conclusion.

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By me on this one: I confess to being clueless. I thought that the Ayn Rand Insitutute was contiguous with the Ayn Rand Society because Leonard Peikoff owns the rights to her name. However, I see that Tara Smith is here in Austin at UT. I just attended a meeting of local Objectivists. I wonder if the kids know...

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I've heard this trademark story before, and as far as I can tell, it's a myth. Rand herself would have had to do this. (And I'm pretty sure it's trademark, not copyright.)

The story that ARI controls ARS/APA is also dubious. Of their current board, Lennox and Hunt are not aligned with the ARI faction. Lennox was once on the board of IOS, a precursor of TAS, and spoke at one of its conferences but has stayed out of the Objectivist wars since then. Hunt, as far as I know, never got into them. You see more ARI loyalists on their board and program listings because the orthodox faction has (wisely or not) chosen to cultivate academics while TAS has (wisely or not) gone for a more popular appeal.

(I've heard that at their meetings the orthodox people sit on one side of the room and everybody else on the other.)

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Peter,

The trademark story is absolutely true. The older version of the ARI logo read Ayn Rand ™ Institute.

And it wasn't Ayn Rand who registered the trademark. It was the Estate of Ayn Rand.

After 1996, Jim Lennox went through a brief period of "neutrality," during which he was hostile to both ARI and The Atlas Society, but he has long since gone over to ARI.

I don't know why Lester Hunt is still on the board of the Ayn Rand Society. It is no longer a neutral forum for discussions of Rand's ideas. Since Allan Gotthelf aligned with the Ayn Rand Institute, he has been putting younger ARIans on the ARS board whenever he gets an opportunity.

I was at an ARS meeting where the ARIans sat on one side of the room and nearly everyone else sat on the other. It took place in 2006. The ARIans will be able to sit on both sides of the aisle now.

Why else would Yaron Brook have been scheduled as a speaker?

Brook is not a philosopher. If he applied to join the American Philosophical Association (of which the ARS is officially a subsidiary organization), he would be told he is ineligible. More to the point (since I am not eligible for membership, either), there is no indication that Brook had any idea what John McCaskey and David Harriman were disagreeing over. He simply knew that Harriman was Leonard Peikoff's protégé and McCaskey wasn't.

Robert Campbell

PS. The Orthodoxy has actually had mixed success placing its acolytes in academia. Ask Andrew Bernstein.

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Sometimes there are speakers at APA meetings whose PhD is in an area not philosophy. The physicist David Finkelstein, for example, spoke in a session of the Metaphysical Society of America on the topic “Quantum Physics and Metaphysics.” More recently, psychologist Susan Carey participated in an APA Author Meets Critics session on her book The Origin of Concepts. Interdisciplinary sessions like those are infrequent, but there is no bar to them by APA.

I would have expected that with his formal education and his long training in Rand’s conception of the moral basis of capitalism, Yaron Brook could make a positive contribution to a session focused on Adam Smith and Rand. The session was cancelled a month after it was announced, when the expert on Adam Smith, Prof. Otteson, withdrew.* I see Adam Smith comes up in Brook’s new book Free Market Revolution, but I don’t have the book, and I don’t know if what it says about Smith is anything beyond the elementary.

That book will be released on Sept. 18. A book from which I expect a lot, Leonard Peikoff’s The DIM Hypothesis, is being released today. I am especially interested in his treatment of the relation of mysticism and epistemological skepticism. It seems to me there has been a causality from the former to the latter all the way back to the beginnings of Western philosophy.

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I would have expected that with his formal education and his long training in Rand’s conception of the moral basis of capitalism, Yaron Brook could make a positive contribution to a session focused on Adam Smith and Rand.

Mr. Boydstun:

How many people could you name off-hand who have postgraduate-level education in some subject and "long training in Rand's conception of the moral basis of capitalism"?

Now why, out of all of those people, was Yaron Brook chosen for the debate with Dr. Otteson?

Dr. Campbell

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Oh, yes, I think you are correct in surmising that Yaron Brook would come to mind for the ARS principal Allan Gotthelf because of the latter’s close ties with principals of ARI since its inception, and indeed since he was in graduate school. That said, I do think that Prof. Gotthelf will do what he wants at ARS and with regard to anything else, quite independently of ARI.

As for financial support of people like Gotthelf and their activities, ARI is only a channel. Gotthelf and the Objectivist scholars he has helped along are personally acquainted with the principal contributors to the Anthem Foundation. ARI could disintegrate, and no significant financial streams to its beneficiaries need change.

That reminds me of my own financial support (not so much as from the rich guys, of course) for David Kelley’s institute for years, but now years long past. My only interest was in supporting Dr. Kelley’s scholarly work, and had the institution evaporated, I would have still tried to support his work in those years of my life.

You mentioned the year 1996 in connection with Prof. Lennox’s disconnection from David Kelley’s institute. Yes, he was one of the associates, the most important one, whom David lost when the Brandens came on David’s stage. Lennox had been a regular (fabulous) presenter at David’s IOS seminars, and had been an advisor to IOS. I doubt your conjecture that Lennox has “gone over” to an ARI side of issues. Unlike Gotthelf, he has never made presentations at OCON.

I really enjoy the writings of both Gotthelf and Lennox. I learn a lot from them. It is wonderful that they have achieved the professional success they have.

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Brook would probably qualify for the APA. Their application says "membership is open to persons whose training in philosophy is advanced and systematic enough to make them competent to teach the subject at the college or university level or by achievements in philosophy sufficient to warrant affiliation by the association" - which is pretty loose - and not only to persons with graduate degrees in philosophy. Ph.Ds in math, law or classics hold appointments in philosophy departments, so finance is not too great a stretch. If he'd been invited to address one of their affiliated groups, that would make him an even likelier candidate.

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Peter,

You're right about the looseness of "achievements in philosophy sufficient to warrant affiliation by the association."

Still, what has Yaron Brook published that would constitute an achievement in philosophy?

And do you think that Brook has any idea what McCaskey and Harriman were disagreeing over?

Robert Campbell

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That said, I do think that Prof. Gotthelf will do what he wants at ARS and with regard to anything else, quite independently of ARI.

As for financial support of people like Gotthelf and their activities, ARI is only a channel. Gotthelf and the Objectivist scholars he has helped along are personally acquainted with the principal contributors to the Anthem Foundation. ARI could disintegrate, and no significant financial streams to its beneficiaries need change.

Mr. Boydstun:

Do you really think that Allan Gotthelf can conduct himself entirely independently of the Ayn Rand Institute while attaining such objectives, obviously of some importance to him, as getting an article of his own and an article by his student, Greg Salmieri, into Bob Mayhew's volume of Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged?

Dr. Gotthelf has publicly defended the false claim, made in the publicity for the Mayhew volume, that it was the first edited volume to offer a scholarly treatment of Atlas Shrugged. When asked to give an example of Rand scholarship by an ARI-affiliated writer that he considered to be of poor quality, and/or an example of scholarship by a writer not affiliated with ARI that he considered to be of good quality, he refused to answer.

I don't know the roster of contributors to the Anthem Foundation, but even before John McCaskey was ousted, it was effectively a subsidiary of ARI whose grantees were expected to treat "Fact and Value" as part of the Objectivist corpus. Do you suppose that Allan Gotthelf has remained on good terms with McCaskey since Leonard Peikoff demanded the latter's expulsion from ARI?

One of the many people with a post-graduate education and the "long training" of which you speak is named David Kelley. Do you suppose that Dr. Gotthelf will be inviting Dr. Kelley to participate in any ARS-sponsored exchange on the morality of capitalism?

In his short book On Ayn Rand, Dr. Gotthelf took the bold step of referring to The Passion of Ayn Rand, though he stopped short of giving it a full citation. He dismissed it, in a footnote, as a product of "embitterment." If he had said anything positive about it, would his chapter, or Greg Salmieri's, have appeared in a book edited by Dr. Mayhew?

You've made it clear that you find any discussion of the internal politics or external tactics of the Ayn Rand Institute distasteful. But the organization's politics and its tactics will not cease to exist merely because you prefer not to discuss them.

Dr. Campbell

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. . .

One of the many people with a post-graduate education and the "long training" of which you speak is named David Kelley. Do you suppose that Dr. Gotthelf will be inviting Dr. Kelley to participate in any ARS-sponsored exchange on the morality of capitalism?

. . .

I surely do suppose David Kelley might be invited to deliver a paper or a response at a session of ARS. At the session in which Irfan gave his paper, Gotthelf gave enormous deference to David Kelley's participation time in the Q&A. That was the session in Baltimore at which was announced not only the volume on Atlas Shrugged edited by Mayhew, but the volume on Atlas Shrugged edited by Younkins.

Yes, I am aware of the politics that goes on, including yours over the years, with respect to Objectivity, with respect to David's institution, and with respect to your competitors and enemies in general. Discussion of such things serves political and personal vindictive purposes, but I have something else to accomplish here.*

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Over time internecine contentiousness will be smoothed over as a lot of Objectivism evaporates leaving objectivism. A long time.

--Brant

Objectivism is greatly cultural and, franky, somewhat contrived and artificial--the greatness of the philosophy lies essentially in the total package of four basic principles covering metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics--these four are bounded together by the individualism of the single thinking mind--the individualism isn't just in the first two but in all--off this individualism through surplus we get social groupings requiring elaborations beyond atomistic individualism for people are social animals; this needs a lot of work not explicitly philosophical in all cases

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I surely do suppose David Kelley might be invited to deliver a paper or a response at a session of ARS.

Mr. Boydstun,

Do you want to make a bet on that proposition? You think Allan Gotthelf might invite David Kelley to deliver a paper or a response at an ARS session. I think no way in hell is Dr. Gotthelf going to do that.

So, Gotthelf announces Kelley as a speaker or responder, you win and I lose.

To be completely fair in this regard, I realize Dr. Gotthelf is pushing 70 years of age, so I don't know for how many more years he'll be running ARS.

Dr. Campbell

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Yes, I am aware of the politics that goes on, including yours over the years, with respect to Objectivity, with respect to David's institution, and with respect to your competitors and enemies in general. Discussion of such things serves political and personal vindictive purposes, but I have something else to accomplish here.*

Mr. Boydstun,

What were my politics "over the years" concerning Objectivity, the journal you founded?

I have no idea what you're talking about here.

Dr. Campbell

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You know perfectly well what I was referring to and you know you are weaseling on whose name and journal it is, and you know perfectly well the impact of the fraudulent successor on the possibility of an authentic continuation of my journal beyond V2N6. Not clever, you are not.

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Discussion of such things serves political and personal vindictive purposes, but I have something else to accomplish here.

Mr. Boydstun,

If discussions about the internal or external politics of various organizations are truly distasteful to you, why do you keep jumping into them?

One who was truly above all such things would surely ignore all these discussions. Or, at a minimum, refuse to participate in any, even when occasionally tempted.

Jumping in selectively whenever Leonard Peikoff or persons affiliated with him are being criticized suggests a desire on your part to defend Leonard Peikoff that does not extend to Nathaniel or Barbara Branden, to David Kelley, or to some others we could name.

And refusing to address so cut and dried a question as whether Dr. Peikoff contradicted himself in the pages of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, as you have now done on several occasions, suggests that whether he contradicted himself is of no moment to you and should never be to anyone else. All that should matter, apparently, is the identity and the purported motives of the person who raised the issue.

Could you just maybe be acting from your own "personal vindictive purpose" in these exchanges?

Dr. Campbell

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You know perfectly well what I was referring to and you know you are weaseling on whose name and journal it is, and you know perfectly well the impact of the fraudulent successor on the possibility of an authentic continuation of my journal beyond V2N6. Not clever, you are not.

Mr. Boydstun,

If you don't want to count the single issue of Objectivity that came out under the editorship of Carolyn Ray as genuine, you have a legitimate beef. In my estimation, it wasn't nearly as good as any of its predecessors, all of which were your work. There were no complaints, some years later, when you made your back issues available at this site and Dr. Ray's one-shot effort was pointedly not included. I expect you could put out new issues, not count Dr. Ray's failed attempt, and no one would care.

Now, to repeat what I said many years ago, and thought I would never need to say again in private, let alone in public...

I had no involvement in any arrangement or lack of arrangement between you and Dr. Ray, concerning her project of continuing Objectivity after Volume 2 number 6.

I played no editorial role in it.

I did not publish anything of mine in the single issue of Objectivity that came out under her editorship.

I gave Dr. Ray my subscription fee in advance, after she let folks know about her project at a TAS conference.

Eventually I mailed out paper copies of the issue. This was after Dr. Ray indicated in a blog post that she had had copies printed, lacked the funds to send them via US Sail (and, apparently, hadn't even maintained a proper list of subscribers—if she had one, I never saw it), wasn't going to mail them, and, at the end of this dispiriting story, was going to leave them to moulder in her garage.

I persuaded her, I recall with some difficulty, to throw them all in a box and mail it to me, after which I went on various boards in Rand-land, and emailed some folks I knew individually, asking them whether anyone had an unexpired subscription to Objectivity, and if so, whether they would provide me with their snail addresses. I then put the magazines in envelopes and mailed them at my expense (very modest expense, when all is told). Had I not done so, I would never have received the copy I paid for, nor would anyone else. (I still have a few paper copies in envelopes somewhere, if anyone ever wants to see one. The remainder has been dispatched to a landfill.)

Now, after I requested the subscriber information in forum or two that you were reading, I got a flaming email from you, complaining that I was responsible for... well, to this day, I still don't know what.

I didn't edit the damn thing.

I had no role in deciding whether that single issue would be made available electronically, or whether future issues would be made available electronically... or whatever it was you thought Dr. Ray wasn't supposed to be doing or had agreed not to do.

But somehow I was responsible for the dreadful offenses, real or imagined, done you by Dr. Ray.

I frankly thought your flaming emails were completely nuts. But I also ventured that in the fullness of time, you would think better of it and mercifully forget your foolish behavior. I've never mentioned it in any public forum. You submitted material to JARS and it was published and I was sometimes on the loop on that, and I heard (and heard of) no further complaints from you. Yet lately, here at OL, there's been continual raging negativity out of you.

Hey, if you've still got a bug up your fundamental aperture about Carolyn Ray's failed experiment in running Objectivity—in which my sole roles were disappointed subscriber and unpaid mailing agent—you've got a major "personal vindictive purpose."

I'd have thought that whatever I did to piss you off, it would have been a lot more recent, and maybe actually consequential.

Dr. Campbell

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I surely do suppose David Kelley might be invited to deliver a paper or a response at a session of ARS.

. . . You think Allan Gotthelf might invite David Kelley to deliver a paper or a response at an ARS session. I think no way in hell is Dr. Gotthelf going to do that. . . .

Concerning ARS programs, check out here 1988, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2007, and 2012, for which last the speaker was a public supporter of McCaskey in the dispute with Peikoff. The speculations you put forth tend to be more simple than is plausible, but then maybe you don’t actually believe their simplicity and are only baiting for some opposition and increase of attention to your latest round of spital on Gotthelf, Peikoff, Mayhew, . . . .

Mr. Boydstun,

. . .

Jumping in . . . to defend Leonard Peikoff that does not extend to Nathaniel or Barbara Branden, to David Kelley, . . . .

Wrong again: a, b, c, d, e

. . .

And refusing to address so cut and dried a question as whether Dr. Peikoff contradicted himself in the pages of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, as you have now done on several occasions, suggests that whether he contradicted himself is of no moment to you and should never be to anyone else. . . .

. . .

No, I said I would try to work your study in and treat the issue seriously and with the appropriate historical context. I've studied enough philosophy to know that there is no such thing as a significant philosophy book that is without significant contradiction and significant other error. The most important contradictions are often deep and not exposed until generations later. Sometimes a contradiction on the surface may prove genuinely a contradiction and of great importance, and sometimes not. Beginning twenty-one years ago, in "Induction on Identity," and continuing right up through my recent work on the analytic-synthetic distinction, I have argued substantial errors in the philosophic writings of Peikoff (and Rand). Your continual assertions and insinuations of my slavishness to the views of Peikoff are false. But, yes, you did know that all along your baiting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Concerning #19, I never doubted your report of what acts were yours and what acts were not yours, only your representation that the initiative of your act was innocent of politics. I had offered to send a check to anyone who had sent money to Dr. Ray for the journal volume she had failed to deliver. (I had at her outset given her my list of subscribers, and presumably some of the people whose money she took were among my subscribers.) That way I could have tried for a new handoff of the journal. It was no big deal for my own continued press. I started that journal; I could start another one, more to my liking given my later intellectual development. But as many have observed, eyes and minds on the written word are now largely here, on words in this medium. And I have proven that one can use this medium right here for presenting serious new work that will be read.*

Hey, my "fundamental aperture" would be my eyes and the mind behind them. Wake up and see the good before you.

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Mr. Boydstun,

Concerning #19, I never doubted your report of what acts were yours and what acts were not yours, only your representation that the initiative of your act was innocent of politics.

Since you claim to know what the politics were behind my offering to mail out the marooned copies of a single issue of a journal that Carolyn Ray was leaving to age in her garage, please inform me.

'Cause then maybe I will have some idea, after all these years.

I had offered to send a check to anyone who had sent money to Dr. Ray for the journal volume she had failed to deliver. (I had at her outset given her my list of subscribers, and presumably some of the people whose money she took were among my subscribers.)

I was not aware of your offer, nor of the forums in which it was made.

Are you saying that you would have preferred that no one ever see a paper copy of what they had paid Dr. Ray for?

Since Dr. Ray did not supply me with a subscriber list (my recollection is of her saying she'd lost whatever list she had), I had no way to know who she had gotten their names from. Not that I can see any relevance to it...

That way I could have tried for a new handoff of the journal. It was no big deal for my own continued press. I started that journal; I could start another one, more to my liking given my later intellectual development. But as many have observed, eyes and minds on the written word are now largely here, on words in this medium. And I have proven that one can use this medium right here for presenting serious new work that will be read.

How in hell was a "new handoff" prevented?

You did a far better job editing the journal than Dr. Ray did. Nearly everyone who knew of it associated it with you, not with her.

So what would have stopped you taking it back, immediately or at some later date?

In the ranting email I received from you back then, there was no reference to any of the above considerations.

What I recall you going on about was Dr. Ray's alleged violation of an agreement with you not to make Objectivity exclusively electronic. (She had suggested on her website that she would do that in the future, but nothing came of it.)

Not being a party to any agreement you had made with Dr. Ray, I didn't understand why her proposing to go electronic could either be my doing or my fault.

I still don't.

All I'm seeing here is an awful lot of resentment and paranoia. Being vented by one and the same OL contributor who has been so aggressive in staking out the sweetness and light franchise...

Dr. Campbell

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. . . You think Allan Gotthelf might invite David Kelley to deliver a paper or a response at an ARS session. I think no way in hell is Dr. Gotthelf going to do that. . . .

Concerning ARS programs, check out here 1988, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2007, and 2012, for which last the speaker was a public supporter of McCaskey in the dispute with Peikoff. The speculations you put forth tend to be more simple than is plausible, but then maybe you don’t actually believe their simplicity and are only baiting for some opposition and increase of attention to your latest round of spital on Gotthelf, Peikoff, Mayhew, . . . .

Mr. Boydstun,

I did indeed notice the presence of Travis Norsen on an ARS program.

When the entire steering committee of ARS consists of persons aligned with ARI, not even someone like Dr. Norsen will be welcome there.

You are continuing to ignore evident changes in the ARS steering committee over the past 10 years, and evident changes in Dr. Gotthelf's attitude toward the Ayn Rand Institute over that same period of time.

I'm not sure what "spital" is. Could be a neologism derived from "spite." Could be a misspelling of "spittle."

Either way the meaning is clear.

From Stephen Boydstun's point of view, any criticism directed at Leonard Peikoff, Allan Gotthelf, or Robert Mayhew must be invalid, so long as the criticism was voiced by Robert Campbell, or can be plausibly associated with that maleficent actor in the mind of Mr. Boydstun.

You might benefit from dialing back on your own "spital."

Dr. Campbell

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No, I said I would try to work your study in and treat the issue seriously and with the appropriate historical context. I've studied enough philosophy to know that there is no such thing as a significant philosophy book that is without significant contradiction and significant other error. The most important contradictions are often deep and not exposed until generations later. Sometimes a contradiction on the surface may prove genuinely a contradiction and of great importance, and sometimes not. Beginning twenty-one years ago, in "Induction on Identity," and continuing right up through my recent work on the analytic-synthetic distinction, I have argued substantial errors in the philosophic writings of Peikoff (and Rand). Your continual assertions and insinuations of my slavishness to the views of Peikoff are false. But, yes, you did know that all along your baiting.

I stand corrected.

What drives Mr. Boydstun has at no time been a slavish defense of Leonard Peikoff, or of various Peikovian acolytes.

What it has been, for a little while now, is a fiercely reflexive opposition to Robert Campbell. Amplified by the corresponding refusal to admit that any ideas emanating from the likes of, well, you know, could ever be worth crediting.

If I were as manipulative as Mr. Boydstun imagines, I could test my hypothesis by criticizing, say, Barbara Branden, and waiting the nanoseconds that would elapse before Mr. Boydstun came roaring out, purportedly in her defense. (The same Mr. Boydstun who professes to believe that Jim Lennox was right to make his exit from TAS as soon as "the Brandens" came calling.)

But I'm not that manipulative and I doubt such a test is needed.

Could it be that Mr. Boydstun has not read all of The Logical Leap because he might end up agreeing with some of the criticisms made to date by other participants at this site? (I'm far from the biggest contributor to those lines of criticism, but I doubt it matters.)

if so, maybe Mr. Boydstun should put a 10-year hold on cracking the front cover of The DIM Hypothesis. That way he won't have to choose between stating his own criticisms and feeling obliged to ignore, dismiss, or dismiss any that might shortly be coming from the likes of me.

Dr. Campbell

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He's already written a critique of DIM on OO, trenchant enough to get him booted from the ARI board, methinks.

Great!

Now let's see whether Mr. Boydstun brings any of it back here.

I think Peikoff's already in some trouble when he gives differentiation all of one footnote—see today's posts on the DIM thread here at OL—but I have a long way to go before I can produce a proper, umm, integrated, critique.

So Mr. Boydstun can state a bunch of his criticisms, before I ruin the show by giving any of mine that he wouldn't want to get caught dead agreeing with.

Robert Campbell

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