JARS V14 N2 - December 2014


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Hey, everyone - the latest issue of Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is officially in print and available for purchase TODAY!

An essay by yours truly is included, and here are the details:

WHAT'S IN YOUR FILE FOLDER? RAND'S UNIT-PERSPECTIVE, THE LAW OF IDENTITY, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF THE PROPOSITION, 171-274

ROGER E. BISSELL

The author contends that the Objectivist epistemology has lacked a viable model of propositional knowledge for nearly fifty years, due to neglect of Rand's unit-perspective view of concepts. This pioneering insight, he says, not only is an essential building block of her concept theory, but also welds together the three levels of logical theory and provides the clearest X-ray picture of our multilayered conceptual knowledge. Using the unit-perspective to expand Rand's theory of concepts, the author then devises a theory of the proposition, giving considerable attention to axioms and statements about nonexistent subjects.

Here are links to the announcement:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/001952.html

http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/index.asp

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(Note to Michael: I don't know what I'm doing wrong. When I set it for HTML, this is what I get. When I take the HTML off, I can't cut and paste, and I still get this....REB) Sorry for the run-on stuff, folks.

(NOTE FROM MSK: :) Fixed it.)

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Peper copies of JARS Volume 14 Number 2 will be mailed on December 10.

Besides Roger's major contribution, the new issue includes:

Robert White on the personhood of corporations

Ed Younkins on Atlas Shrugged as an integrated work

Dennis Hardin's critique of the Peikovian DIM hypothesis

Mimi Gladstein on Rand and feminism

Fred Seddon's review of books by Michelle Marder Kamhi and ... Roger Bissell

Hannes Gissurarsson's review of Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century

Robert Campbell

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Fred Seddon's review of books by Michelle Marder Kamhi and

Kamhi has a new book out?

Let me guess: More nagging about what is not art according to Kamhi? More outright denials of the reality of others' experiences of art? More suggestions of others as psychologically deficient or fraudulent if they claim to experience in a work of art what Kamhi does not? More attempts to sneak in Kamhi's aesthetic personal limitations as the standard and limit of all mankind?

Let's see:

http://www.mmkamhi.com/who-says/contents/

Yup. Just as I suspected.

Under "Chapter 9, “Today’s Dysfunctional Artworld—Who Is to Blame?,” I wonder how much blame is assigned to Ayn Rand. After all, Kamhi thinks that architecture is not art, and Rand spent her life promoting it as an art form, and even wrote a novel about it as an art form. I'd think that that would make Rand just as evil and destructive as anyone else who was advocating classifying something as art which Kamhi didn't think should be so classified.

Also, does Chapter 9 list Kamhi and Torres as being worthy of blame for today's dysfunction? After all, they both accept music as a valid art form, even though it does not meet Rand's or their own definitions and criteria of art.

J

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Fred Seddon's review of books by Michelle Marder Kamhi and

Kamhi has a new book out?

Let me guess: More nagging about what is not art according to Kamhi? More outright denials of the reality of others' experiences of art? More suggestions of others as psychologically deficient or fraudulent if they claim to experience in a work of art what Kamhi does not? More attempts to sneak in Kamhi's aesthetic personal limitations as the standard and limit of all mankind?

Let's see:

http://www.mmkamhi.com/who-says/contents/

Yup. Just as I suspected.

Under "Chapter 9, “Today’s Dysfunctional Artworld—Who Is to Blame?,” I wonder how much blame is assigned to Ayn Rand. After all, Kamhi thinks that architecture is not art, and Rand spent her life promoting it as an art form, and even wrote a novel about it as an art form. I'd think that that would make Rand just as evil and destructive as anyone else who was advocating classifying something as art which Kamhi didn't think should be so classified.

Also, does Chapter 9 list Kamhi and Torres as being worthy of blame for today's dysfunction? After all, they both accept music as a valid art form, even though it does not meet Rand's or their own definitions and criteria of art.

J

Whoa! Since when did Rand write a novel about architecture?

That's it. I'm heading to Half Priced Books this afternoon. :laugh:

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Kamhi thinks architecture is *not* a form of art? This is not news.

Surprisingly to some (though this should not be news either), Rand (at least in the end) thought so, too. While putting together the "A" entries for his Ayn Rand Lexicon, Harry Binswanger confronted her with the blatant illogic on p. 46 of The Romantic Manifesto, and she asked him to OMIT the "architecture" entry from the Lexicon. (Amusingly, Binswanger *retained* the mention of architecture in his entry for "visual art.")

This is, of course, a gross example of rewriting reality - in particular, Rand enlisting Binswanger in an attempt to dump her one and only set of theoretical comments on architecture down the Memory Hole. Out of sight, out of mind. Except, there's that stubborn "Art and Cognition" essay that refuses to go away.

By contrast, the Lexicon contains a full page on each of the other two visual arts (painting and sculpture), four pages on literature, a page and a half on dancing, and THREE pages on music! Seems a bit odd and sad to omit the art form on which she focused by far the most in her *fiction* writing. Even if architecture *doesn't* fit her definition of "art" (though I think it does, and have argued so in JARS), that's no excuse for sweeping it under the rug.

REB

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Architecture is art if perceived as art. I perceive Fallingwater as art. Wright even used framing of windows to define the window glass. They in turn framed the nature seen from the house making nature art with seasonal variations. Those variations also encompassed the house from the outside. The metaphysical nature of art is defined by esthetics which is descriptive--that is apart from materials used. The rest is epistemological. Any moral intent and moral effect is up to the artist. The experience is what is experienced. The rest is talk, talk, talk (and will you please pay me?)!

--Brant

all the rest of it too: let's dance

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I haven't read Michelle Kamhi's new book—or even seen Fred Seddon's review yet (I'm in the editorial loop for a lot of JARS articles, but not for all).

So I'll reserve comment on the aesthetics.

I did get to see most of the other articles in this issue. Lots of good stuff on its way...

Robert Campbell

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  • 1 month later...

In the most recent issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (V14N2) is Roger Bissell’s “What’s in Your File Folder? Rand’s Unit-Perspective, the Law of Identity, and the Fundamental Nature of the Proposition.”

The Abstract of this hundred-page, very ambitious essay remarks that “the Objectivist epistemology has lacked a viable model of propositional knowledge for nearly fifty years.” Not quite. David Kelley’s 1996 paper “Concepts and Propositions” made a try viable enough, I anticipate, for it to be folded into a future book on the Objectivist philosophy.

The outline of Roger’s treatise “What’s in Your File Folder?” is as follows:

Introduction

1. Concepts and Propositions

2. The Nature and Necessity of Standard Propositional Form

3. Propositions that Predicate “Existence”

4. Axioms, Axiomatic Concepts, and the Cognitive Role of Propositions

My favorite parts are 3 and 4. The thinking is fun, and engagement with much pertinent literature on the subject matter is a survey of the literature I appreciate. I was saddened to see no mention or discussion in this area (of §II “Rand’s Use of Language”) of Tibor Machan’s 1992 Evidence of Necessary Existence, which Prof. Machan later made a chapter in his book Ayn Rand.

Thanks to Roger for creating and sharing this adventure in ideas and by this paper introducing me to Reinhardt Grossmann’s The Existence of the World. In return I’ll mention François Recanti’s Mental Files for possible future assimilation into Objectivist works dealing in that idea.

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Stephen, thanks for your comments on my essay. I hope this will encourage others to subscribe to JARS or at least buy this issue and read it themselves.

Yes, I probably should have given a nod to Tibor's comments in his Objectivity essay and his later book on Rand. He had (IMO) some serious misconceptions about axiomatic concepts vs. axioms, regarding the former as principles (which are propositions, not concepts), regarding the latter as applying to all of existence (which the axiom of consciousness does *not*) - among other things. I *did* address these errors, but not by reference to Tibor's published comments, and that was an unfortunate oversight. I will correct it "for the book." :-)

And yes, I probably should have focused more attention on David Kelley's 1996 essay, since I did have some substantial problems with it. However, I'm not sure how appropriate it would have been to do so in my essay, since (to my knowledge) he has never distributed his piece outside of IOS and TOC seminars. Apparently he regards it as "not ready for prime time" and thus as something he does not want to have quoted and critiqued publicly. (I seem to recall our being asked not to circulate the essay, which would seem to imply not circulating *portions* of the essay either. Maybe there's a Fair Use exception...?)

Kelley's 1996 essay was recycled at a TOC Graduate Seminar in 2001, and several years later (2006, I think) Will Thomas said he had been struggling in vain to get Kelley to revise it and put it out as a monograph, if not part of a book. It's now been another 8 years since that conference, at which Kelley said he was working on some advanced issues in epistemology, and I'm figuring it's just about time for some of those presumed writings to surface. Some really cutting-edge, upper-level epistemology would be welcome at this time. (Surely it would be better than that wretched mess that Binswanger published last year.) But Kelley has published a number of essays from the 1980s through the 2000s, so if a nearly 20 year old essay is not yet published, there's probably a pretty good reason for it, "viable" or not. (In my case, it's because I'm paid to play trombone, not write philosophy. :-)

BTW, Kelley and I had a rather vigorous debate in June 1996, at the tail end of an IOS Cyberseminar on propositions. He found my paper on unit-perspective and propositions to be seriously objectionable, and I had substantial problems with his essay as well. My view has been tossed about here and there on Objectivist discussion boards (including here, but I repeat myself), but I've gotten no serious takers in all this time, so perhaps now that it's in lengthy, better organized and argued form, it will get another look from those who value such ideas. Your post here can't hurt a bit, Stephen, so thanks! :-)

REB

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I should add that Tibor gave me a pre-publication copy of his Ayn Rand book manuscript, inviting my comments, which I gladly provided, and for which he kindly acknowledged my help in his book. I was pleased to see that some of my suggestions were taken to heart - and disappointed that others were not.

It's indeed perplexing to find that one of (what I thought was) my most insightful and worthy suggestions was publicly recognized as such by no less than Comrade Sonia, while not adopted or even given an explanatory dismissal by my friend of 45 years. C'est la vie, I guess...

If I have time, sometime soon, I will put up some excerpts and comments to illustrate what I am talking about - and as I mentioned in the previous email, I will try to appropriately include it in the book version of "What's in Your File Folder?"

But for now, I have to get back to work on part 2 of the file-folder essay, which is on how the dual-aspect of "the objective" permeates Rand's epistemology, from perception and introspection, through concept, propositions, and syllogisms. Lots to crank out by my March 1 deadline. Ciao...

REB

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  • 2 weeks later...

BTW, Stephen - my next essay, "Where There's a Will, There's a 'Why': A Critique of the Objectivist Theory of Volition," is in final pre-publication editing for the July 2015 issue (V15N1) of JARS. Judging by your disappointment with omissions from my first File Folder essay (in V14N2), you will probably not be happy to see that none of the articles on volition appearing in Objectivity were cited.

There is at least one worthy remedy available to you, though - I'm sure Chris would welcome an article commenting on either or both essays (as well as the one I'm working on now for December 2015, V15N2).

To me, these topics are highly fascinating, but also intimidating and demanding - not only in terms of the difficulty in contextualizing and resolving the issues, but also in corraling a sufficient amount of appropriate supporting material that does justice to both the mainstream and Objectivist literature. I had to draw a line somewhere, or I'd be working on those essays for another 10 years!

Thank goodness for online discussion groups! 40 or so years ago, I had the benefit of real-time, live discussions of these ideas, but over the years, people have drifted hither and yon, and they get busy, and it's hard to get a fruitful discussion going. (As opposed to getting trapped in one of the snarky variety, which is all to easy, it seems.) There is a price for independence and isolation, and part of it is that you and your thinking are not as well connected to the world at large - but you're also not under anyone's thumb either, and there's a lot to be said for that.

Anyway, please do share your thoughts on my File Folder essay - whether privately or here on OL or in an article for JARS, or any combination thereof. It's always good to have input from good minds.

REB

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