The Complexity of Reality

[Charles R. Anderson]

Preface

This essay was written because some who call themselves Objectivists believe that any mistake in correctly identifying reality is an act of immorality. In view of my understanding of the complexity of reality, mistakes in understanding it are inevitable. Human beings are not all geniuses and even geniuses have only finite time to devote to thought. Not all problems will yield to these limited thinking resources, especially those of a single person. Yet, those of us who love thinking and wish to apply it as fully as possible to living our lives, have to race against time. This means we cannot always dwell on one aspect of reality so long that we can always correctly understand it. Human beings are very finite, while the universe is huge! If we are not willing to make mistakes, we will not explore much of our universe. It is backwards to say that making a mistake is immoral, since that would mean that the only moral course is to timidly refrain from trying to understand reality. This is the ultimate stultification! It is also profoundly anti-life.

I also make the point that the particularity and individuality of people is as likely to be an advantage as is something like the particularity of engineering materials.

This essay was posted on 17 March 2005 on my blog, Reasoned Thoughts. I have made one minor editorial change in posting it here.

The Complexity of Reality

The complexity of reality seems a strangely abstract subject for an essay. Why is that of interest to an Objectivist or indeed to anyone? Well, because reality consists of particular existents, or to be less formal, of particular things. Among these things are us and we are extraordinarily particular, or as we say of people, we are very distinguishable as individuals. Now, if we are in the habit of underestimating the complexity of materials, tables, and cows, are we not much more likely to underestimate the complexity of people and their interactions? It is common for people to do just this and Objectivists are sometimes among the most shameless in oversimplifying everything in our quest for tight, simple, logical arguments.

There is a real place for simplification, but we need to retain consciousness of how and why we have performed it in our thinking. As Ayn Rand astutely noted, concept formation depends upon a kind of simplification. It requires that we delete certain measurements of the attributes of things. A table is a table whether it has four legs or three. It may be 4 feet high or it may be 3 feet high. It may be 6 feet long or 12 feet long. Having the concept of a table is valuable to us. It allows us to say, "We need a table for our dining room." Having noted that, we can next consider the particular characteristics that this table should have. We want it to be high enough that we can sit comfortably in chairs around it and yet do not have to reach too high to gain access to our plates. The height of the table can be so chosen. We need to consider how many people should be able to eat at the table at one time. We need to be sure it will fit in the dining room. We had best think about whether it will fit through the doors, so we can put it there. So, as useful as the general concept of table is, we must in many cases put the dimensions of a particular table back into our thinking as we make use of the general concept of a table. As we do that and consider the materials from which it should be made and how they should be processed, we have an individual table again. Finally, as we use it, it will acquire its own set of particular scratches and stains. We live in a world of particular things.

Particular things can be incredibly complicated. Sometimes this seems inconvenient, but actually it is often very essential to our modern technological control of our human environment. Consider the tools that man had to develop in order to gain enough control over the world that his life became less desperate than that of being the prey of lions, tigers, bears, bacteria, and viruses. Without tools, he was subject to the extremes of heat and cold, to the loss of water, and to starvation. At first he had to work very hard to make wood, stone, and bone tools. This was not easy. Making sharp and durable edges from stones is very difficult and tedious work and actually took a lot of skill. Working with wood in all of its varieties was never easy either. But, the varieties in which each material came, did make many applications of these materials possible. But, let us move on to the age of metal use.

The four most common elements in the earth's crust are, starting with the most prevalent, oxygen, silicon, aluminum, and iron. Of these, iron was discovered about 2500 BC. But oxygen was discovered in 1774, silicon in 1824, and aluminum in 1825. For a long time after its discovery, aluminum was more expensive than gold, because it was so hard to unlock from its oxides and other mineral forms. There was no chance of an early Aluminum Age to preceed the Bronze Age. Aluminum was bound up in all kinds of rocks, schists, micas, and clays, but was never found as a vein of pure metal. Fortunately, copper and tin we also discovered in 5000 BC and 2100 BC, respectively. Copper and tin proved relatively easy to work with, so the Bronze Age preceeded the Iron Age. But, copper, tin, and iron are all very soft and of little use for structural purposes in their pure forms. To be useful, one has to have the right additives as in the case for iron and the right mixture of copper and tin in the case of bronze. In the modern era, we use a plethora of iron alloys. Most of these are useful for engineering purposes only when a host of processing conditions are carefully controlled. These alloys are rather complex and often have very individual characteristics that make them suited for the many different applications we have for them.

First, for our more sophisticated uses, we make pure iron, which involves a good deal of processing, which was largely accomplished in the 1800s, but has continued to be improved up to the present time. We now have cast irons such as gray iron, ductile iron, compacted graphite iron, malleable iron, and many alloy cast irons. We have a host of carbon and low-alloy steels as cast steels, hot-rolled steels, cold-finished steels, extruded steels, spring steels, forged steels, bearing steels, dual-phase steels, and ultrahigh-strength steels. There are hardenable steels. There are steels optimized for high temperature use, for neutron radiation resistance, for low-temperature properties, for maximum fatigue resistance, to resist embrittlement in various environments, and to have high toughness. There are wrought tool steels, powder metallurgy tool steels, maraging steels, ferrous powder metallurgy steels, austenitic manganese steels, wrought stainless steels, cast stainless steels, elevated temperature stainless steels, wrought and powder metallurgy superalloys, polycrystalline cast superalloys, and directionally solidified and single-crystal superalloys. All of these are based on iron as the primary ingredient. These hundreds of alloys have a host of individual properties based upon their elemental ingredients, the temperatures they were heated to, the rates at which they were cooled, the manner in which they were beaten, and the order and sequence of all these processes. Iron is alloyed with carbon, manganese, chromium, nickel, vanadium, molybdenum, cobalt, titanium, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, boron, copper, niobium, zirconium, tungsten, tantalum, aluminum, nitrogen, beryllium, lanthanum, yttrium, hafnium, and selenium to produce various properties.

Engineering metals are usually polycrystalline, with each crystallite called a grain and separated from other grains by a grain boundary. The crystallites consist mostly of very ordered planes of atoms stacked neatly with respect to one another. Iron has chemical phases with carbon called martinsite, austenite, and pearlite. Carbon can be distributed throughout the iron in clusters of graphite. The alloying elements may form various carbide chemical phases distributed in the alloy. The alloying elements may be found preferentially at the grain boundaries or at the metal surface. The size of the grains may be large or small. The grains may be elongated along one axis. The crystallites may have atomic vacancies, interstitial (extra, squeezed) atoms, dislocations (abrupt misalignments within crystallites), twin dislocations, and slip planes. There may also be various intermetallic phases in which the ratio of one element to another is locally precise, but different from areas around it. There is a wealth of possibilities. These materials have a level of complexity that provides us with a huge range of properties and hence of applications of each alloy. We are constantly discovering more useful alloys.

Now, this is just iron alloys. We have copper, nickel, aluminum, titanium, cobalt, tungsten and many other alloys. We also have semiconductor, glass, ceramic, polymer, mineral and inorganic compound, and composite materials. We have thousands of materials and thousands of ways to process them and tens of thousands of ways to use them in thousands of different environments. From the standpoint of an analytical laboratory owner, we investigate materials all the time that are not quite what they are supposed to be. Many errors are made in processing materials to manufacture them to the complex recipes required for each material. Sometimes, fraud and shortcuts were the cause and there are moral implications, but mostly these materials are made well by men operating in a rational environment and still some errors arise. Generally, suspect materials are sent to us for analysis by people who want to produce a good product and they want our help in identifying what is wrong with the material. This is the moral action of rational men. As we proceed in our laboratories to analyze the material we learn more and more about it. Along that path of investigation, however, it is not uncommon for us to have a wrong idea about the implications of our data with respect to the properties of the material. Afterall, materials can be very complex. We simply keep adding up the data from our measurements and observations and try to formulate an idea of the material composition and structure which is compatible with the data we have acquired. Sometimes, we consult with the customer, since he often knows a great deal about his own material and how they have attempted to process it. Faced with all of the complexity of materials and with a considerable complexity in the experimental techniques we use to make measurements and to observe these materials, we have a great deal to sort out and keep track of. We commonly call on multiple members of our staff with training and experience in different fields, with various materials, and with the analytical techniques to make sense of all of the results. In the end, it is amazing how often we figure out what the material is and identify the problem and its cause.

What a wonderful complexity. There is so much richness here that we can support an incredible technological society upon it. The individuality and distinguishability of our engineering materials supports our civilization and makes our lives more secure and more likely to be happy. It gives us many opportunities and many choices.

So, if there is so much advantage in the individuality of materials, should we not suspect that there is at least as much advantage in a society of individual men and women? Could it not be that having people of different appearance, experience, athletic abilities, musical abilities, mixes of visual versus aural learning abilities, career interests, reading interests, acting abilities, math and science abilities, favorite sports, disease resistance, dreams, child-raising talents, philosophical beliefs, and sexualities is an advantage to all of the individuals in a society? I find it hard to believe that it would not be an advantage.

However, I constantly observe that many people are certain that anyone different than themselves is not so good as they are. In fact, if they have a different philosophical belief they are likely to be considered evil. By losing sight of the complexity of reality, we lose sight of the reason that people make errors. Even geniuses make errors without having any evil intent. It is also common to condemn those who have a different sexual expression. Apparently, the idea that they are different is unacceptable.

Such judgmental leaps are unfortunately not uncommon among Objectivists, just as they are not uncommon among people who identify themselves with less rational philosophies. Many people are sorely tempted to over-simplify reality and to define the good very tightly and narrowly. It makes thinking about topics easier. In fact, if we simplify enough, maybe we can reduce any complex situation into the equivalent of a situation Ayn Rand addressed and quote her to find the truth. Now we do not have to think for ourselves at all. How convenient. But, we may well have thrown context out the window. We may have made the error of not appreciating the complexity of the situation or person. A terrible consequence is that we lose sight of what makes us individuals and of all the value that comes from that individuality. We have lost the Individualism which is a cornerstone of Objectivism. We have lost much of the richness of experience that makes life so worth living.

[Kat]

Human beings are not all geniuses and even geniuses have only finite time to devote to thought. Not all problems will yield to these limited thinking resources, especially those of a single person. Yet, those of us who love thinking and wish to apply it as fully as possible to living our lives, have to race against time.

Thank you for posting your articles, Charles. You touch on many good points. Ayn Rand was a genius and did a hell of a lot of thinking for one person in one lifetime. I think that it is important for us to think as well as apply the thinking of AR and others to living our own lives and in a world full of thoughtful and diverse individuals who enhance and enrich our own lives. Objectivism is a very integrated philosophy, but once you decide it is complete and closed you have essentially stopped thinking about it. Imagine if medical science was treated as a closed system.

Kat

[Charles R. Anderson]

Thanks for your comments, Kat.

It is just baffling to me that anyone could presume that philosophy and the principles to live life by could be more simple than understanding, say, metal alloys. It has taken many very bright people about 150 years of work to understand maybe most of what one needs to know about the engineering of metal alloys. I make even this statement with trepidation, since more is constantly being learned. Metal alloys are complex systems, yet they are trivial compared to human beings. This suggests that if the principles of alloying metals have taken so long to understand, then it is very unlikely that the principles for life by much more complex living systems can be laid out in one lifetime by one great thinker.

No, that is just wishful thinking. It is the thinking of people immersed in a sea of dangling abstractions due to a determination to ignore the concrete examples of reality which would provide them a better context. They are missing the Big Picture.

It is as though they want to be God and know it all. Well, they are not God. What is more, who in their right mind would want to be God? God is damned to eternal boredom -- He knows it all already.

[Kat]

I'll admit that some of that metal-orgy stuff made my eyes glaze over a bit when I read the article, but now I realize that it was because I haven't been studying it for 150 years. Imagine how long it would take to understand people. Admittedly, many are quite transparent, but others are truly amazing in their complexity.

It is as though they want to be God and know it all. Well, they are not God. What is more, who in their right mind would want to be God? God is damned to eternal boredom -- He knows it all already.

That reminds of of a saying that they used to put on t-shirts,

"When God, created man, she was just kidding!"

Rock on,

Kat

[Philip Coates]

Hi Charles,

I think what leads intellectuals to intrinsicism, which is what you are really decrying here -- the throwing away of the concept's measurements [the bad form of 'measurement omission' hah hah!], the throwing away of details -- is, often, that once they have essentialized, it is unpleasant to have to immerse oneself in the messy, 'imperfect' world of detail. If you stay in the ivory tower of abstraction, life is simpler and you feel more powerful. Plato spoke in these terms of the world of particulars.

Phil

[Charles R. Anderson]

Hi Kat,

I am glad you enjoyed my levity with god. Too bad he could not laugh at my comment also! You know, there being no humor in what you already expect and know. There are so many problems with the concept of a god, male or female or unsexed, as god may be.

I am sorry to have glazed your pretty eyes on the metallurgy. But as a scientist it seems a good illustration of physical systems which are complex, but nonetheless simple compared to human beings. The point is to encourage people to look at the context of the world we are trying to gain knowledge about. It is in the face of this complexity that we can marvel at our own ability to use reason to learn so much, but also appreciate the incredible value of all the thought handed to us by those who preceded us and who now surround us. This value of others to our life as thinking allies makes it important that we have an initial bias to treat them benevolently and to treat their ideas with the respect of objectively evaluating them.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Thanks Phil,

Sure. Of course there is a great need for essentializing and I am not at all opposed to it. There are certainly many principles of metallurgy for instance that are very helpful in developing new alloys or heat treatments and suggest what alloying elements one might wish to add. Understanding many of the common features of various alloys helps greatly in troubleshooting the alloy that went bad as well. But in the end, we have to remember that the details are important also.

Your comment about the power of simplifying so one can understand and feel powerful is a good one. As an undergraduate, I had a physics professor who could not understand why I was interested in imperfect materials. He could understand an interest in the perfect lattice of silicon with its beauty of simplicity, but why would one be interested in defects and disorder? That was dirty engineering stuff, as he put it. My response was that that was what makes materials more individual and useful. Even the perfect lattice of Si has to be doped to make it useful. I laughed, thinking back on this conversation, when a Nobel Prize in Physics was given for work on amorphous materials to Philip W. Anderson, Sir Nevil F. Mott, and John Hasbrouck van Vleck in 1977. The flurry of work on chaos theory was like justification also. Then Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 for his work in explaining aspects of liquid crystals and polymers, which are more complex materials systems.

Of course I do not lose sight of the fact that much of the reason we do science is for the sake of developing technology. Science is not just done for the sake of knowledge to be stored away and pulled out every now and then and smiled at. We do it to improve our lives by gaining greater control of our environment. Oops, that can't be very PC!

[JennaW]

This is baffling to me... in the adult world, why would anyone NOT notice that reality is more complex than they thought? Why would an article like this NEED to be written in the first place?

Perhaps it's because I surround myself with adults who all know how complex and surprising and deep reality is. Maybe I've got a slanted view that not every adult shares.

It's just... somewhat sad, that's all. Charles, it was a very wonderful article and it expresses its subject matter well. I just think it's sad that it's an issue at all, after about 2000+ years of human thinking.

[Rich Engle]

Linking immorality to not identifying something is just goofy. And there are even situations where a person's psychological state is such that they, er, "evade" and it is not immorality. It's called being a human being. It's called evolving. Was it Emerson that said everything that God ever made has a little crack in it?

If you want that kind of muck, there's plenty of fundamentalism out there to pick from. Dealing the Immorality Card is the weapon of choice.

It looks to me like some view Objectivism as a guarantee, a safeguard system, a deadman's throttle. Reality is too fluid for anything to be able to satisfy that requirement 100% of the time.

[Robert Campbell]

Technically, as I'm sure the orthodox will hasten to remind us, Charles' essay is incorrect: Objectivism makes a distinction between honest error and dishonest error (evasion). If you take Peikoff's treatment of certainty seriously, you'll even conclude that it's possible to be certain about something while (honestly) wrong.

The problem is that Objectivism lacks a philosophy of science. In fact, it doesn't include an account of reasoning and decision making in any complex, real-world domain. Which, in turn, encourages a lack of recognition of how easy it is to be mistaken about a lot of things. So the moralizing tendency takes over, and makes most errors out to be willful. Such articles as Peikoff's notorious "Fact and Value" come perilously close to treating all significant errors as willful.

And it doesn't help that in the standard Objectivist presentation (including David Kelley's...) perception is held to be error-free because it is automatic or non-volitional.

Adhering to Objectivism does not guarantee correct decision making about most issues. It can't be a "deadman's throttle." How could it? Too many factors have to be taken into account, in a given context, that the philosophy of Objectivism doesn't encompass.

I've been interested, in reading Tara Smith's book Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, to see how she handles that temptation to deal the Immorality Card. It's particularly worthy of note because I've found only two disagreements between her and Leonard Peikoff concerning substantive points in normative ethics (neither of them is announced in her book). Smith succesfully avoids most of the rhetoric that in parts of OPAR leads the reader to envision abysses of irrationality, arbitrariness, and immorality cracking open ahead, behind, and to both sides, all at once. But not entirely--I'm still finding traces here and there.

Robert Campbell

[Charles R. Anderson]

Jenna,

Of course you would think it natural and adult-like to see the real complexity of the world! This is one of your many admirable traits. Unfortunately, as Phil noted earlier, many people find a great sense of control and power in over-abstracting and over-simplifying many important subjects. There are many fairly intelligent people who also become bewildered by complexity. They can manipulate simple concepts well, but they become lost when faced with too much complexity and to much particularity. We all gain from using concepts and from the use of classifying things, but those with more wisdom stay on a constant guard to check for errors due using these thinking aids.

Have you noticed that some scientists make careers of just incrementally changing a condition in a system under study by many other scientists, while some few are able to establish a whole new area of research because they were able to identify the critical question in a sea of questions and then start to address it theoretically or experimentally. Many scientists and many people generally have trouble extracting the important issues from a sea of particulars. Some scientists see important parallels or analogies between what seem to other people to be very different things. It is interesting how much complexity a given mind can examine and work with. Creativity is substantially a function of just this factor.

However many years the human race continues on its active quest for knowledge, the tug of war between the temptation to over-simply our understanding of the world and the real complexity of the world will go on. So people like us, who love thinking and exploring, will not likely ever run out of things to study and experiments to do. Isn't that one aspect of this being a benevolent universe?

[Charles R. Anderson]

Rich,

Thanks for your comments. I agree with you. I have a few small cracks myself, yet I think of myself as a pretty good person!

In a better world, I might have Robert Campbell's hair. Instead, I got my Mom's father's hair. Now, I might change that, but I would be very concerned that without his challenged hair, I might also have to give up some of the intelligence I may have from him. Genetics sees to it that most of us have a few cracks, even before we start making our own choices in a very complex world and in our own complex lives. So deal with it! I am not really very concerned about my challenged hair, though I am sure that it has been a factor in some women's assessment of me!

[Charles R. Anderson]

This essay was written because some who call themselves Objectivists believe that any mistake in correctly identifying reality is an act of immorality.

The quote is from the Preface to the article. I also addressed Objectivists in the last paragraph of the article, but the sense there is similar. Technically, I did not and would not say that Objectivism does not make a distinction between honest error and dishonest error (evasion). I did not even imply that Peikoff fails to make some such distinction, though I do believe that he has incorrectly determined that David Kelley has made a dishonest error. Peikoff, and more so some other ARI people and such as Valliant and his group, have a tendency to incorrectly attribute differences of opinion to dishonest error.

I think it is and must be a goal of Objectivism to understand the role of error in the life of rational men. That many Objectivists do not understand this is the result of errors on their part. It is not the fault of Objectivism. Of course, if Objectivism were the closed system that some argue it is, then these errors would be locked in place. I do not believe Objectivism is a closed system. It is my business as an Objectivist to note that those who think Objectivism is closed are in serious error, even it this includes Ayn Rand herself.

Basically, there is so much right in Objectivism, that I expect its development to continue until it achieves everything that one would want from a philsophy committed to reason and the mission to guide man in living life. This will be a non-ending quest.

I am not yet familiar with your views as to the correct interpretation of perception, so I will not comment on your statement about perception being held to be error-free by the standard Objectivist presentation. I can see all kinds of issues arising here due to what is meant by error-free, just as a starter. Another important issue will be establishing the boundary between such things as the physics of light perception in the eye and the interpretation that occurs in the brain. This is a huge subject and one that I am unprepared to get into at the moment.

So far, I seem to be disagreeing with you! But, these are probably very little things. I do agree with you that a philosophy of science is badly needed and that it has just scratched the surface on reasoning and decision-making in the complex, real-world domain. We also agree on the moralizing tendency. These are the big issues, so in balance, we seem to agree on the essentials!

Thanks for your comments.

[Charles R. Anderson]

A technical clarification:

On re-scanning the article on Complexity above to check on all of my references to Objectivism in it to reply to Robert's comment, I discovered an unfortunate wording. Eeee, gods, an error!

In discussing the many irons of the cast and wrought iron group, I wrote pure iron, when these irons are all rich in carbon. It is the chemistry of the carbon and its distribution in these irons that provides the distinctions between these materials. Apparently, when I wrote this, I was thinking of the alloy of bronze which combines two metals, while the irons have only one metal, so I said pure iron. Bad choice. Actually, graphitic carbon, common in the irons, is in some ways quite metallic.

By the way, this error was not an evasion and it is not a very serious breach of morality. It is bad that my prior proofreadings of this article did not reveal it to me. I usually do a pretty good job of proofreading, but it is sometimes amazing what does escape most people when they edit articles. I give you my apologies.

[JennaW]

I see it as a good starting place.

Thus far there is no Oist philosophy of mind, of science, of psychology; it does not address psychology and related fields, most especially in the past ~20 years.

If it is the type of "closed system" that some say it is, then it cannot have a philosophy of mind, science, psychology, nor anything else since those are not what Rand added herself, and therefore cannot be Objectivism proper (according to some definitions of "closed system").

[Charles R. Anderson]

Jenna,

If, as Peikoff largely maintains, you believe that science and philosophy are entirely separate, then the last 22 years do not matter. Whatever science learns will not affect philosophy.

This has to be nonsense. If we need philosophy as a tool to live our lives, and science informs us about the nature of life and the world in which we are attempting to live, then there must be an important feedback between the two fields.

So, not only did Objectivism, as far as it was developed by Ayn Rand, not cover all aspects one should find in a complete philosophy even based on our scientific knowledge of 22 years ago, but it also has not addressed the implications of 22 years of scientific research or the thousands of years of research we hope lies in mankind's future.

[JennaW]

If, as Peikoff largely maintains, you believe that science and philosophy are entirely separate, then the last 22 years do not matter.  Whatever science learns will not affect philosophy.

If this is what Peikoff's after (and I'm not entirely sure since he seems to oscillate), he's shot Objectivism in the foot; given this definition, one is Objectivist if one ignores the past 22 years of science. Or, one can listen and learn of the past 22 years (and the future) of science, integrate it, but cannot be "closed system" Objectivist-where-Objectivism-cannot-be-influenced-from-everything-else. The choice, based on this definition of "closed system" is basically: to be ahistorical (acontextual), or not.

Amazing that reality never enters the equation.

This has to be nonsense.

It IS nonsence. It makes ZERO logical sense. It's such nonsense that I truly doubt anyone really upholds this while knowing it. If so, they are operating under the biggest cognitive dissonance of their life, akin to the Bible Literalist that uses computers.

If we need philosophy as a tool to live our lives, and science informs us about the nature of life and the world in which we are attempting to live, then there must be an important feedback between the two fields.

So true. That's why I consider philosophy one aspect of being human; and science another aspect. They interrelate, feedback, and learn from each other.

So, not only did Objectivism, as far as it was developed by Ayn Rand, not cover all aspects one should find in a complete philosophy even based on our scientific knowledge of 22 years ago, but it also has not addressed the implications of 22 years of scientific research or the thousands of years of research we hope lies in mankind's future.

I doubt any philosophy covers the entire course of existence. Philosophy exists as a general way to inquire, proceed, and process mentally about life, reality, existence, etc. Since the only static thing about reality is that things-- including humans-- change (growth, development, neural plasticity, learning, cycles), a philosophy based on reality must adapt to change in accordance, general as it may be.

If Objectivism, as this particular "closed system" definition, cannot change, how can it be internally consistent and complete? Doesn't Objectivism suggest that knowledge is contextual, we interact with reality, and that reality is the final arbitrator? If reality is the arbitrator, but we learn that Objectivism deviates from reality at some level, what happens then?

Which is why I think that having a "closed system" definition and THEN making it one's personal identity is akin to mentally killing oneself. But I think people don't know that they're doing this; especially if they're under ~40 years old. For me, the definition is fine for identification-of-philosophy purposes.

Therefore "closed system" must be defined only in terms of differentiating Objectivism from other philosophies; and not in terms of replacing the identity of the philosophy to human identity and individualism.

While I do think Oism has many positive aspects, I also think that misapplication of its higher levels can render these positive aspects, even the axioms, null and void. While I don't think misapplication is always bad because people are not always aware of their own mental states, I'm also not really sympathetic to people who actively want to be ignorant in the face of new knowledge. Skeptical--- fine, but there's the unreasonable, partial, one-sided skepticism (some postmodernists are well know for this), and then there's the healthy, unbiased, impartial, critical thinking skepticism.

Therefore I've been thinking that there must be a different perspective on what a "system" is. By looking at biology, at nature, at human behavior, at reality-- more often than not I am looking at systems that are stable because they have the capacity for adaptation, change, and dynamics.

[Charles R. Anderson]

Jenna,

Since we recognize that a closed-system philosophy cannot provide a complete and sufficient set of principles for thinking, for recognizing reality, or for ethics, we simply do not have to accept the claim of anyone who says that the best philosophy available is fixed, closed, and dead. We pick it up and we proceed to add to it and even amend it where needed. Let's not worry too much whether we agree with Peikoff or even Rand. Our concern is always primarily whether our ideas agree with reality. We respect Rand and others to the degree that their ideas correspond well with reality. Reality and how it affects human life is our focus, not great and dead philosophers and writers.

What some of the people who say Objectivism is closed want is this: Force us to abandon it as a great start and go off and name our own philosophy. OK, so I start Andersonianism. You start Jennaism or such. Then, they hurl stones at us, because we "stole" substantial numbers of Rand's ideas. They have pushed us into a no-win situation. So, do not let them push you into such a corner.

Well, personally, I am determined to recognize the great ideas Ayn Rand did so much to develop, but also continue to exercise my own independence of mind, as I did when I evaluated her work so favorably. It is for me and other rational people to continue to build on the foundation she provided. If one of her supports falls victim to a sink hole opened up by further developments in science or psychology, then we fix it. Where more foundation is needed, we provide it. If our philosophy changes greatly or expands greatly from where Ayn Rand left it, then we can consider changing its name.

Of course, some people think any change, no matter how small, constitutes a need for a new name. Should we follow the software route? Objectivism Mod. 1a for Rand's writings, Mod. 1b includes her writings and those she approved publication on. Mod 2a includes those and anything Peikoff added. Mod 2b includes Schwartz, etc. Mod. 3a is David Kelley's work added to Mod 1b.

The expansion of mankind's knowledge has always required extensive borrowings from the great minds who preceeded us. Wouldn't it be absurd if everyone had simply frozen philosophy at the point of Aristotle or worse at some earlier Greek philosopher? Or with that of Jesus!

You have a generous heart to be so sure that must be intelligent enough to see so much of what you see. It would be a greater society if that were true! Few people have as much objectivity as you do. Of course, it seems odd to encounter this in people who are claiming to be much better Objectivists than either you or me. ;.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Should we follow the software route?

Charles,

Since OPAR was declared by the author not to be official Objectivism, merely his view of it, maybe we can call that a Beta version?

I kinda like the "open source" approach. Rand's work is hers, of course, but the philosophy is added to and tweaked as it goes along. I like Kelley's work, for instance. He gave great tweaks on epistemology and benevolence.

Michael

[JennaW]

Charles, thank you for your insight

Jennaism is what I'm doing; I've made up my mind already to be, at most, objectivist-friendly. However, I still have questions and challenging particular perspectives may yet yield to me something I may have missed, or give me insight on a path that I do not want to go on. And getting constructive feedback helps to see what other perspectives people may have.

[Fran]

Let's not worry too much whether we agree with Peikoff or even Rand.  Our concern is always primarily whether our ideas agree with reality.  We respect Rand and others to the degree that their ideas correspond well with reality.  Reality and how it affects human life is our focus, not great and dead philosophers and writers.

Oh, wow! Thanks Charles for this insight, this really helped clarify for me where I'm going wrong. :D/ I know that what you've said here is supposed to be implicit in Objectivism, but somehow with all the in-fighting, this seems to get pushed aside.

[JennaW]

Yeah, I'd just ignore the infighting and factioning, while at the same time protecting my best interests in accordance to *reality*.

Basically, the people who matter don't mind, and the people who mind don't matter!

[Charles R. Anderson]

Jenna and Michael,

Basically, we are all really individuals with our own individual philosophies. I always follow my own mind, as both of you do also. I could call my philosophy Andersonianism, but people would have to get to know me pretty well before they had any idea what that meant. It is of course, the most accurate description of my philosophy. Both of you would have a pretty good idea of what I mean by Andersonianism, but you are rare people both in terms of being exposed to my ideas and being able to understand them.

We all are happy to accept the best ideas that we can find among those others have developed. We understand the personal advantages and the advantages in doing that that accrue to society and to mankind's development of civilization. So, I am happy that Jenna is a Jennaist and it is fine with me that Michael is a Michaelist or Kellyist. I am happy because both of you are committed to reason, to learning, and are in fact quite rational.

And, of course, it is really quite pleasant to share and trade ideas with good and intelligent people. It is still nicer when you are so kind as to say that you are enjoying our exchanges.

Jenna, I sure hope that I will one day see you smile at me in person. I would treasure that moment. My youngest daughter, Katie, is studying biotechnology at RIT and recently told me see wants to go to grad school and study neuroscience, especially brain development in children. Somewhere down the road, I would like to put her in touch with you.

Michael, I agree that David Kelley's work is very important. He has identified very underdeveloped areas in Objectivism and developed very sound ideas. David is very reality oriented and he has a good understanding of the Big Picture. He thinks in terms of what a society needs to believe in to become rational and to establish the conditions that individuals need to manage their own lives. He greatly appreciates Ayn Rand's work, but his primary allegiance is always to reality. He does not think that this is in contradiction with the principles of Objectivism.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

He greatly appreciates Ayn Rand's work, but his primary allegiance is always to reality. He does not think that this is in contradiction with the principles of Objectivism.

Charles,

This is exactly my posture. I was just horsing around with a cute image you brought up. I still like the idea of "Objectivism 3.17, Beta Version."

I consider myself an Objectivist (probably a renegade one).

Michael

[Charles R. Anderson]

Fran said:

I know that what you've said here is supposed to be implicit in Objectivism, but somehow with all the in-fighting, this seems to get pushed aside.

There are many things that get pushed aside. Understanding reality and developing ideas consistent with it are among them. We forget that in order for Ayn Rand to develop her ideas, she had to focus hard and consistently upon reality. We also forget that we want a philosophy that will provide us the principles we need to live our individual lives happily.

So, if we get too caught up in the infighting, when are we going to have the time and energy to develop new ideas to expand our knowledge, and incidently that of the rest of mankind? In addition, this infighting is depressing. One way to keep it from depressing each of us is simply not to engage in it. Sure, we fight for our values, but this does not mean that we have to jump into every sandbox with scabbling toddlers in it and join in the tug-of-war over a bucket and shovel. We are the adults. Some people never grow up. Our hope should be that some toddlers will one day understand the example we set as adults and choose to follow our lead. Some adults with less rational ideas will also be impressed and start to study our ideas.

Real leadership is always by example. So, go about living a happy and productive life and develop your ideas with the more rational people you can find. What else would make sense?