Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore


Michael Stuart Kelly

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Laure,

For me, it's the priority of moral notions, or notions of heroism, over epistemological norms of evidence and reasoning that's the problem. Disagreements over moral norms that the parties have arrived at, or tested, through evidence and reasoning can be very difficult, but need not pose a threat to objectivity.

For a near-pure expression of the nonobjectivity that comes from giving priority to what you want a person to be, not to knowing what the person really is, it's hard to beat "My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand" by Leonard Peikoff.

Robert Campbell

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Michael, you bring up this cognitive/normative thing a lot, but you should think about the possibility that you make this accusation when you disagree with someone's normative evaluations.

Laure,

You are entitled to that observation, but my conscious standard is based on observing patterns. When I notice someone consistently getting facts wrong and presenting the wrong version as if he knew them, and consistently leaving some essential facts out when simple logic requires them for completing evaluative syllogisms (and other cognitive distortions), I look for causes.

But I might slip once in a while and read someone in a wrong manner. I can only judge what I see and, like any human being on earth, I have my off days, too.

Michael

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[T]he straw fire only happens when intellectuals of the level of Robert Campbell, Neil Parille or William Scherk directly engage Valliant and contest him. Valliant almost always wears them out with mind games, too.

I am a bit of an also ran, only buying PARC this year, and not having yet read either MYWAR nor PAR (both zooming to me now via Amazon). Robert and Neil are far beyond me in scope and knowledge.

This most recent exchange with Valliant was most instructive. He struggles to remain upright at all costs. With the discussion of the Smith's departure, we end up with a statement that can only be checked by reference to Sciabarra.

Valiant claims that Sciabarra insisted to him that any changes to the production of the play were made and reversed prior to the opening. First he said that it was in online discussion that that insistence was made; then he said it was in private email correspondence. This stilled my part in that thread for the moment: I would like to know if that part of the story is true.

Strangely, this is the kind of incident that forms one of the grains of Valliant's argument. Any tale told by the Brandens is doubtful, unless and until it can be corroborated.

Why should I believe the very late gloss Valliant applies to his own tale? I don't believe it. If he wants to prove the bit about Sciabarra, he can do it.

In the end, I got no satisfactory answer to how a line change became a 'systematic betrayal.' Valliant's argument remains the same: Barbara Branden 'suppressed' vital evidence about the Smith break, evidence that would show Rand to have been entirely justified in excommunicating her friend.

I think Rand flipped out in this instance. That Valliant added this detail to Branden's telling speaks to his honesty and his judgement. He realy can't see the problem in using 'systematic betrayal' to serve as a headline to his misreading of Walker's book. He is stuck there. If he said systematic betrayal, systematic betrayal it is. No matter that any such system of betrayal needs more than one instance. No matter.

The substance of the book is made up of such editorializing. My biggest main beef with PARC is that kind of inflated language. I find the book almost hysterical, and cultish. Hysterical in its tone, and cultish in its political function. Its function is to defend the Founder against all attack. Since a cult mindset imposes a view of the Founder's divinity, any darker aspects of the Founder's personality or actions, if exposed, are exposed only as part of an effort to destroy or denigrate the Founder and her pure sect.

Any criticism is thus impure, evil, wrong, immoral, tainted by self-interest. Any tales that darken the persona of the Founder must be lies. Every last portent and implication takes on the taint of the malicious scribes.

It is this demonological high drama that takes my breath away. Where else but in Objectivism can be found this fraught struggle against realistic depictions of the Founder? Where else is a biography anathema?

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Valiant claims that Sciabarra insisted to him that any changes to the production of the play were made and reversed prior to the opening. First he said that it was in online discussion that that insistence was made; then he said it was in private email correspondence. This stilled my part in that thread for the moment: I would like to know if that part of the story is true.

I'm not yet convinced that Valliant understands what the term "opening of the play" means. He seems to have been very confused about it, and may still be. Perhaps his confusion is driving him to mischaracterize the contents of Sciabarra's alleged private correspondence with him? Who knows? I guess the only way we're likely to find out is if Valliant turns out to be as unethical as other Objectivists when it comes to publicly posting private messages.

J

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I have a question concerning accuracy. Valliant just wrote:

I also appreciate the fact that Campbell has conceded that Nathaniel Branden was "bullshitting and stalling" in all that counseling -- i.e., using these therapy sessions to manipulate Rand, at least, in part -- and, of course, this is something with which I agree, but for which I have been harshly criticized.

I have read most everything there is to read on this issue and I cannot recall a single instance of someone criticizing Valliant for saying that Branden manipulated Rand in therapy sessions.

So that would leave out harsh criticism. You can't have harsh criticism without criticism in the first place.

Does anyone have an instance of this? I would be interested in seeing it.

I myself have harshly criticized Valliant (and deservedly so for his boneheaded reasoning and shoddy scholarship), but never for that conclusion.

Is he starting to fabricate things in order to try to gain sympathy as a victim? My gut reaction is, "Give it up, bub. That suit of clothes looks really weird on you." Maybe the sporadic self-pity of the site's owner is rubbing off on him.

It is strange how Valliant practices the very things he claimed he tried to expose in PARC.

Michael

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Michael,

I can't say I've read every last word of the endless PARC discussions, but I've read a lot.

And I've never seen anyone criticize Mr. Valliant for saying that Nathaniel Branden was lying to Ayn Rand during the "therapy" sessions, or trying to stall.

Even David M. Brown, who absolutely ripped Mr. Valliant's book shortly after it was published, agreed that AR was being lied to.

So I have no bloody idea what he is talking about.

Robert Campbell

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WSS,

You'll remember that after Barbara Branden said post-PARC that she heard the typewriter story from Rand, Valliant accused her of lying. Yet when confronted with his claim that he checked the archives, it's ok for him to say that by archives he meant only the archives that were available to him. And he has no hestitation about hinting that various people support his book, that he has anonymous sources (oh wait, they aren't really sources), etc.

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Ah, who cares about Valliant, it's clear that a rational argument with him is impossible, so you're all wasting your time, you'll never convince a True Believer. All those years these endless silly rants on Solo againt the Devil, uh.. "the Brandens", who gives a damn, except some people who have damaged their brains by staying too long on Solo? They are not worth the effort, so let them stew in their own juice. If we stop paying attention to them they'll dry up or start fighting each other and that is much more fun.

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DF,

I agree that there is no reason to continue debating Valliant. I, for one, am tired of his claims that his critics don't respond to his arguments and his endless contention that he wins every argument. Just because he isn't happy with the responses I've given doesn't mean I haven't given any.

And, as Ellen pointed out, there are obvious misquotes and misreports in his book that he has failed to acknowledge, such as his claim that PAR doesn't let the reader know that Dr. Blumenthal left Rand and not the other way around. To take another example, has Valliant given any argument for his assertion that Branden might be implying that Rand was abandoning her family in Russia?

Edited by Neil Parille
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Over on SOLOP, James Heaps Nelson asks:

I don't have a lot of time for this topic so I'll ask a question that's been nagging at me for some time: Why is it so important for some people to find fault with Ayn Rand?

I think the question is kind of revealing. Jim's really starting to sound like a zealot. Where did he get the idea that it's "so important for some people to find fault with Ayn Rand"? Why is he assuming that others' disagreements or criticisms of her are efforts to prove that his hero has feet of clay? It sounds to me as if he's very emotionally invested in smearing anyone who dares to question some of the actions of his hero, or to point out the shoddiness of some of her defenders.

I think a more important question is why does Jim get so upset that others simply recognize that Rand had faults? Why is he so disturbed by the fact that some of Rand's fans openly talk about her mistakes, instead of having to be backed into a corner and act like reality-denying fools until finally admitting that Rand was sometimes irrational, self-contradictory, harshly judgmental or dishonest?

Why the attempt pull her down?

Why does Jim assume that any criticism of Rand is an attempt to "pull her down"? Does he think that crying that others are picking on poor Rand will make some of the stupid things she said or did disappear? Is that how Objectivists imagine that they're going to change the world, not by answering criticisms and objections, but by whining that critics are being mean to their hero?

Can I borrow Jim's approach? Why was it important for his hero to "pull down" all of the people she criticized, including some of my heroes whom she judged unfairly and harshly? While Jim is wondering about people needing to pull down others, will he wonder why Rand needed to pull people down, or are such questions acceptable only when asked about anyone other than Rand?

In response to Jim's zealot-like musings about why people are being so nasty to his hero, Pigero grunted:

You have to ask those to whom it's important to find fault with her. Like Campbell.

You might ask him, as well, where's the evidence that I defended "unfortunate and sub-optimal" and that I go to O-Lying, as he claimed yesterday in his effort to scratch my integrity out of the park. I've not succeeded in getting answers.

Pigero is right on this one. He didn't "defend" the view that homosexuality is "unfortunate" and "suboptimal." Instead, while he was Hsieh's obedient little puppy, he very sweetly "agreed to disagree" with her and stow his "rational passion" about the issue. Having Hsieh around to help him get even with Barbara and Sciabarra (because he felt personally slighted by the fact that they recognized what an asshole he was) was more important to him than fighting against Hsieh's views on homosexuality. He was eager to look the other way, but didn't actually defend her views. Now that Hsieh has long abandoned the twit, I think he's starting to feel that it might be safe for him to criticize her, but he appears to be approaching it with a lot of caution. Man, what a neutered little pup she's made of him.

Integrity is the key. It's important, desperately so, to these folk who don't have it to show that Ayn Rand didn't have it either.

I think we all know that Rand had integrity. Some of us have enough honesty and integrity to freely admit that she was sometimes irrational, self-contradictory, harshly judgmental and dishonest. The world isn't going to end if we acknowledge the fact that she wasn't perfect.

Hell, it's even important for them to show that I don't have it.

Pigero doesn't have integrity. He's a self-important twit who lies, manipulates and abuses people to try to make himself look important within the Objectivist movement. Ask all of his ex-friends. His personal "ethics" change to suit his needs. He'll have his lackeys steal a website and software from his ex-partner if he wants it. He'll claim that it's "initiation of force" for someone to say something about him that he doesn't like, especially when what was said was true. He'll publicly publish private e-mails to get even with people for hurting his tender feelings. He'll admit that his temper tantrums are unjust, but when the targets of his unjust behavior are no longer willing to accept his hollow apologies, he'll suddenly decide that his unjust behavior is "rational passion."

It's important to these entities to show that integrity is impossible, thereby letting themselves off the hook.

No, I think we all recognize that, despite the fact that Pigero lacks integrity and honesty, and despite the fact that Rand sometimes erred, or was occasionally a little nutty or disproportionately angry, integrity is important, and is something that all of us here on OL have. Personally, there's nothing in my life that would make me feel that I need to be "let off the hook" about anything. I haven't stabbed friends in the back or otherwise driven them away from me with irrational tirades and personal abuse. I haven't repeatedly lied about them or published anyone's private emails. I haven't stolen anything from ex-partners.

J

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WSS,

You'll remember that after Barbara Branden said post-PARC that she heard the typewriter story from Rand, Valliant accused her of lying. Yet when confronted with his claim that he checked the archives, it's ok for him to say that by archives he meant only the archives that were available to him. And he has no hestitation about hinting that various people support his book, that he has anonymous sources (oh wait, they aren't really sources), etc.

Neil -

You're engaging in a battle of facts with an unarmed man.

The author of PARC seems to major in unnamed sources, in artful equivocation ("I checked the archives and it wasn't there" = "I was given some things from the archives and I checked them" --- not exact quotes) and in evasion of the point. His consistent belief in his ability to read the intentions of each of the Brandens to be other than those they explicitly state (while showing little able to understand the content of either of the books) speaks volumes.

Bill P (Alfonso)

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Over on SOLOP, James Heaps Nelson asks:
I don't have a lot of time for this topic so I'll ask a question that's been nagging at me for some time: Why is it so important for some people to find fault with Ayn Rand?

I think the question is kind of revealing. Jim's really starting to sound like a zealot. Where did he get the idea that it's "so important for some people to find fault with Ayn Rand"? Why is he assuming that others' disagreements or criticisms of her are efforts to prove that his hero has feet of clay? It sounds to me as if he's very emotionally invested in smearing anyone who dares to question some of the actions of his hero, or to point out the shoddiness of some of her defenders.

I think a more important question is why does Jim get so upset that others simply recognize that Rand had faults? Why is he so disturbed by the fact that some of Rand's fans openly talk about her mistakes, instead of having to be backed into a corner and act like reality-denying fools until finally admitting that Rand was sometimes irrational, self-contradictory, harshly judgmental or dishonest?

Jonathan,

This is the normative before the cognitive thing I keep mentioning. The main purpose of cognition, before all others, is to identify. Not to judge. Identify.

James H-N presents a false dichotomy on the cognitive level about Rand: From the way he writes, if one identifies a fact about Rand, one is either tearing her down or building her up. But that is not the purpose of cognition. A fact cannot be integrated and judged good or evil until it is identified. Yet here—at the core of the identification level—there is already a value judgment in his writing. He wants to know answers to questions about importance and questions about finding fault. These are normative concerns. He mistakenly judges the normal human curiosity of understanding what happened as bearing importance about the subject to the agent and he even imputes the agent with an intent to denigrate the subject before even knowing what it is.

The proper sequence should be:

1. What happened? (Essentially who, what, when, where and how), including causality (why). This is the cognitive part.

2. The impact of that identification on other values and what to do with that information. This is the normative part. This is where emotions come in.

It is not as simple as that, but that is another discussion. What I gave is the standard Objectivist reasoning, albeit, given in my own words, not Rand's.

In fact, let's look at Rand's way (from "Philosophy: Who Needs It," the opening essay in a compilation by the same name):

Since I am a fiction writer, let us start with a short short story. Suppose that you are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet. When you regain consciousness and find that you are not hurt badly, the first three questions in your mind would be: Where am I? How can I discover it? What should I do?

Look at how much information needs to be available (the cognitive) before "What should I do?" (the normative).

Notice that in James's formulation, the who, what, when, where, how and why concerning Rand are skipped over in his question about the epistemological importance of identifying to the identifier. It just doesn't grok in his head (about Rand) that people like to know what they are talking about before they judge. They don't like distorted information at the identification level and think that integrating distorted information is a bad thing to do. (Binswanger, on the other hand, once publicly admitted that it was OK to lie about Rand to the public until her impact on the culture was assured. I will have to find that quote. It was in the Q&A to a lecture. That is another case of stressing the normative over the cognitive.)

Thus, I believe JHN has an image of "Rand, the morally perfect heroine" as an axiom on which he builds all of his concepts about her life. The string of plain incorrect allegations about The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden, to cite just one example, and repeat doses where he makes up new stuff (often subtle in the errors), is not intelligible to me in any other light. I can understand one error (or burst of errors) as a simple misunderstanding. I cannot understand a series of the same kind of errors with large intervals between them in the same way. There is simply more operating below the surface.

So why all the acrimony over this? I suggest anyone interested go back to the beginning and see where all the hostility started. When people's attempts at identifying are attacked and misconstrued and they are imputed to have malicious intent as a premise, they naturally dig in and get hostile.

Here is one example from my life and the scale is minuscule when compared to the scale of the break between Rand and the Brandens and later schisms. I once wrote an article on SoloHQ about turning the other cheek. I looked at it from a fresh angle (which I still think was a good one). Now, the very first contact I ever had with Diana Hsieh was about this article, when she published that: "It's author, Michael Stuart Kelly, is perhaps the most transparently dishonest contributor to SOLO." This was in October 2005 and I had recently arrived in the USA from over 32 years in Brazil. I had only been posting on Solo regularly for a few months.

We didn't know each other back then, had not mentioned each other in print online or off, and I know for a fact that she did not have enough information about me to say whether I was honest or dishonest, much less "perhaps the the most transparently dishonest." I was 53 years old at the time and had lived my life outside the USA. My writing was relatively unknown, not the least because it was mostly not written yet, so what can she say she really knew about me?

What standard did she use for that judgment and what standard of comparison? None that she mentioned, except the article she didn't like. Phooey. This was just empty name-calling presented as some kind of boneheaded moral judgment.

This, I submit, is another example of placing the normative as an axiom to build a concept on instead of using cognitive integration based on observation at the root. In Objectivist jargon, this is called a kneejerk. If the fact that Rand's body of work was against Christian principles and she was attacked viciously during her lifetime for it is taken as a timeless axiom, meaning that anyone who questions it is viciously attacking Rand, even the very mention of a Christian principle as compared to her work (unless it harshly condemns the principle), even if it is given in a new light with other roots and shadows, becomes proof of an author's dishonesty if he also says he likes Rand's work. If this premise is accepted, Hsieh actually was coherent in her judgment. Her concept was logically built from the premise.

But I question the premise. It is bass-ackwards.

One must know what something is before one judges it. I constantly see people who do the mental work of making a cognitive identification called all kinds of names in the Objectivist subculture when the facts do not fit certain prejudices. It's as if the boneheads somehow believe that calling the cognitive identifier dishonest or other vile names deletes the fact that he identified from existence.

That's a hell of a standard to base truth on. I reject it at the core. As the lady said, A is A. It doesn't matter what one likes or dislikes.

On that level, Rand is right. Feelings are not tools of cognition. (I have more to say about feelings and cognition, especially normative abstractions, but that is for another discussion.)

This is what underlies my observations about James H-N's numerous misfires on facts, false dichotomies and selective omissions with respect to Rand, the Brandens and PARC.

Michael

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Michael,

When Diana Hsieh ripped into you, she had been a public convert to ARIanism for over a year.

By then, anybody who didn't echo the Leonard Peikoff Institute line was automatically dishonest, as far as she was concerned.

I recall that Jenna Wong got a similar rude greeting from Ms. Hsieh, at a time when Ms. Hsieh couldn't have had a clue who she was or what her motives were about anything.

Robert Campbell

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Robert,

I have on file a list of rhetorical devices used in PARC. I haven't published them because I never studied formal rhetoric (but I intend to) and I wanted to present them in a form as I first identified them, and then with the academic label (or labels as the case may be). I have mentioned a few over time like Argument by Repetition and some others (I would have to dig them up and I don't have time to dig up the posts right now, but for the record, here is one that includes another two that I call Inversion and Distortion).

I thought I had cataloged most all of the rhetorical devices, but you brilliantly came out with another that is right before our noses every day of the week when dealing with many orthodox Objectivists online. I don't know how I have missed it all this time. You said Valliant proclaims victory every three minutes. That's true. With a claque, it gives the impression that he actually has made a point and trounced an argument. Without a claque, the effect is watered down, but that hasn't seemed to stop him.

But my interest went further. There was always something bugging me about the Amazon reader reviews and posts about PARC on other forums by Branden-haters. Your observation was the point I couldn't put my finger on. They always declared victory as if saying it made it so. Here is a selection of quotes from the Amazon reader reviews of PARC to illustrate. Some of these statements are pretty funny.

Edwin Thompson (May 15, 2005)

Valliant's work is a tour de force. His is the dynamite to clear the logjam of deceit that has impeded the flow of Objectivism into the mainstream of popular thought; it will render the Brandens and their ilk just so much flotsam. As John Galt would say, "The road is cleared."

Michael Limber (May 15, 2005)

Thanks to Mr. Valliant's efforts in The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, the growing popularity for the ideas of Ayn Rand can enjoy a further renaissance of careful consideration and genuine debate, and we can put all that other rubbish behind us.

S. Fisher "A is A" (May 19, 2005)

This marks an end to Nathaniel Branden.

William Bucko "Bill Bucko" (May 21, 2005)

He leaves the Brandens not even a fig leaf to hide behind. They stand revealed: an aging Lillian Rearden and an aging Robert Stadler, finally exposed to the public shame they have so long deserved.

X. Li (June 14, 2005)

Big thanks and applause to prosecutor/author, Mr. Valliant, for vindicating justice one more time!

Peter Murphy (June 22, 2005)

Those who don't particularly find courtroom drama interesting, or who think that the good consists in not distinguishing the good from the bad, probably won't get much out of this book beyond concluding that Nathaniel and Barbara Branden were imbeciles for getting caught trying to fool all of the people, including themselves, all of the time.

Andrew West (November 14, 2005)

Thanks to Mr. Valliant for making this antidote available.

jdl (May 6, 2006)

An emerging generation of writers is now seeing Rand in an entirely new light.

Jay Conne (July 17, 2006)

James Valliant has performed a profound act of justice in creating this book and thereby correcting many false accusations against this world class genius who has given the world as much as Newton has in physics. Thank you Jim.

Fred Weiss (February 9, 2007)

After over 30 years of uncontested distortions and outright lies by the Brandens, James Valliant has finally set the record straight and in the process achieved a profound act of justice toward the name and legacy of Ayn Rand.

J. Maurone "Spaceplayer" (February 10, 2007)

If one has questions about the value of Objectivism based on the Branden's accounts, THE PASSION OF AYN RAND'S CRITICS is a valuable defense of a slandered legacy.

As of this writing, the last Amazon reader review is dated December 18, 2007. Like I said, PARC isn't really being taken seriously anymore.

Incidentally, every one of these posts quoted above received a 5 star rating. What is even more curious is that there is no unanimity of people who liked the review. For instance, in the last quote above, the five stars are under the statement, "21 of 39 people found the following review helpful:". If you go through all of the reviews, you will see that it usually hits about the halfway mark, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less. Fortunately, this is one parameter that the zealots were not able to manipulate. Reviews against PARC usually get one or two stars, but also hit about the halfway mark on reader acceptance.

So you don't need to be the world's greatest genius to see that Valliant's claque has been busy, busy, busy trying to fake reality and pretend that PARC has won some kind of battle and that Amazon's readers resoundingly approve. That pesky other parameter just won't go away, but that didn't stop them. (You should see the negative and neutral reviews! :) )

Michael

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I thought I had cataloged most all of the rhetorical devices, but you brilliantly came out with another that is right before our noses every day of the week when dealing with many orthodox Objectivists online. I don't know how I have missed it all this time. You said Valliant proclaims victory every three minutes. That's true. With a claque, it gives the impression that he actually has made a point and trounced an argument. Without a claque, the effect is watered down, but that hasn't seemed to stop him.

That device also struck me. It is a sure sign that the writer has not a good argument, which in this case is also obvious to any unprejudiced reader of that discussion. By continously making that claim, the writer is trying to repress the unpleasant realization that he has no real answer to the argument of his opponent. It is a nice example of faking reality. Someone who really has a good argument has no need to make such claims, as he knows that his argument in itself is telling enough.

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This is the normative before the cognitive thing I keep mentioning. The main purpose of cognition, before all others, is to identify. Not to judge. Identify.

James H-N presents a false dichotomy on the cognitive level about Rand: From the way he writes, if one identifies a fact about Rand, one is either tearing her down or building her up.

I guess the question then is, why would someone only apply that method of thinking to Rand? Why would a person be willing to believe that PARC has shown him the light, and that people who point to all of the gaping holes in PARC could only be motivated by trying give Rand feet of clay? Neil and others have provided a hell of a lot of criticism of PARC that Rand's admirers could try to refute. Yet they don't do so, but instead prefer to ponder why everyone is being so mean to their hero.

When such a person's employers and coworkers criticize a project that he's working on, perhaps telling him that parts of it are defective and will have to be redesigned, is his solution to whine that they're all evil meanies who want to "pull down" the project and give it feet of clay because they resent its greatness, or does he deal with reality and fix the problems? I get the impression that when such a person is dealing with anything other than his vision of Rand, he's very reality-oriented. So why the need to shut one's mind regarding Rand?

Maybe my confusion about certain Objectivists is that I hadn't in the past thought of them as having a religious-like mindset when it came to Rand. Perhaps there was period of latency or something else I had failed to pick up on.

J

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Robert,

I have on file a list of rhetorical devices used in PARC. I haven't published them because I never studied formal rhetoric (but I intend to) and I wanted to present them in a form as I first identified them, and then with the academic label (or labels as the case may be). I have mentioned a few over time like Argument by Repetition and some others (I would have to dig them up and I don't have time to dig up the posts right now, but for the record, here is one that includes another two that I call Inversion and Distortion).

I thought I had cataloged most all of the rhetorical devices, but you brilliantly came out with another that is right before our noses every day of the week when dealing with many orthodox Objectivists online. I don't know how I have missed it all this time. You said Valliant proclaims victory every three minutes. That's true. With a claque, it gives the impression that he actually has made a point and trounced an argument. Without a claque, the effect is watered down, but that hasn't seemed to stop him.

But my interest went further. There was always something bugging me about the Amazon reader reviews and posts about PARC on other forums by Branden-haters. Your observation was the point I couldn't put my finger on. They always declared victory as if saying it made it so. Here is a selection of quotes from the Amazon reader reviews of PARC to illustrate. Some of these statements are pretty funny.

Edwin Thompson (May 15, 2005)

Valliant's work is a tour de force. His is the dynamite to clear the logjam of deceit that has impeded the flow of Objectivism into the mainstream of popular thought..."

And here I was thinking that Valliant's nitwit supporters would have felt that PARC was the righteous private detective who unraveled the mystery of who kidnapped Objectivism and held it bound and gagged with the ropes of dishonesty in the basement of envy in the house of evil which was on the wrong side of the tracks of justice in the town of the importance of ideas.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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Edwin Thompson (May 15, 2005)
Valliant's work is a tour de force. His is the dynamite to clear the logjam of deceit that has impeded the flow of Objectivism into the mainstream of popular thought..."

Edwin Thompson is someone who was a good friend of mine back when. I'm disappointed to see him writing a comment like that -- not from the standpoint of the strained metaphor; he never was a writer; because of the sentiment expressed. (It's a different Ed Thompson, btw, from the one who posts on RoR.)

Ellen

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I guess the question then is, why would someone only apply that method of thinking to Rand? Why would a person be willing to believe that PARC has shown him the light, and that people who point to all of the gaping holes in PARC could only be motivated by trying give Rand feet of clay? Neil and others have provided a hell of a lot of criticism of PARC that Rand's admirers could try to refute. Yet they don't do so, but instead prefer to ponder why everyone is being so mean to their hero.

Jonathan,

I am only speculating, but I am working on an idea. In psychology there is a concept called emotional hijack. It is put in terms a layman can understand by Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence. Look at the following diagram from p. 19:

EmotionalIntelligence-Hijackdiagram.jpg

Here is the text that goes with that page. I had already posted it last year in another place and I am including a small passage I wrote.

In mapping the functions of the thalamus and amygdala in sudden emotional reactions, some impulses have been found to bypass the visual cortex through a "back door." You can find a description of this in Emotional Intelligence by Goleman. Below is a quote (p. 19) from an illustration showing a person seeing a snake and arrows tracing the signal pathways in the brain. He uses the example of how the fight/flight response kicks in, where the "heart rate and blood pressure increase" and "large muscles prepare for quick action" (text quoted from the same illustration).
A visual signal first goes from the retina to the thalamus, where it is translated into the language of the brain. Most of the message then goes to the visual cortex, where it is analyzed and assessed for meaning and appropriate response; if that response is emotional, a signal goes to the amygdala to activate the emotional centers. But a smaller portion of the original signal goes straight from the thalamus to the amygdala in a quicker transmission, allowing a faster (though less precise) response. Thus the amygdala can trigger an emotional response before the cortical centers have fully understood what is happening.

Let's say, for the sake of analogy with my cognitive/normative thing, that the thalamus is where the cognitive integration takes place ("what is it?") and the visual cortex is where the normative abstractions kick in ("analyzed and assessed for meaning and appropriate response"). Obviously some cognitive activity takes place in the visual cortex along with the addition of normative abstractions. Only after all this happens does a signal go to the emotions (the amygdala, which lets loose hormones, etc.). However, there is a bypass for emergencies. In the bypass, there is no cognitive activity after "what is it?" in the thalamus. There is only raw emotion.

This is the state I believe some orthodox Objectivists shoot for with programming their emotions, except they are not interested in just life and death matters, but everyday mundane matters also. They think integration will take them there, but they forget that contexts change. What they integrate is one context. If they automate value judgments for that context and bypass thinking after simple identification in the future—and their field of perception happens to include new elements at a later time—they literally do not perceive the new elements. It is not ignoring the new elements. They don't see them. This is not blanking out. This is pure self-inflicted blindness.

I think there is such a thing as a cognitive bypass in concept formation that works very similarly to the emotional hijack Goleman discusses. And I think it involves reverence. I have planned an essay on the sense of reverence and I am still gathering my thoughts on this. I do know one thing. Reverence is serious stuff. It is intimate and overwhelmingly powerful.

This is one of the reasons I do not mock the religious beliefs of others when I disagree with them (which is the vast majority of the time). I will discuss premises, but not mock. I might even lampoon behavior, but never the object of reverence nor the wish to worship. Notice that with all of my criticism of Rand-worshippers, I have never mocked their desire to worship something, nor have I mocked Rand (which I would never do anyway). I have mocked their boneheaded reasoning, though, and deservedly so.

The other side of the coin is the capacity to feel reverence. This is one of the prizes life gives us when we discover it. It is pure joy. I will never fault a man or woman for trying to aim for the highest life has to offer. The danger is holding reverence for things that short-circuit cognitive activity. The intellectual challenge to me—when I encounter such a person—is to get him to reexamine his object of reverence without becoming hostile or turning his back on life and becoming cynical. It's far easier to destroy a person than to get him to cognitively check his premises on a reverence level.

From what I have observed so far, an object of reverence assumes the role of a fundamental axiom in the process of concept formation. If this created axiom (for lack of a better term) is allowed to take precedence over the person's commitment to seeing with his own eyes and thinking cognitively with his own brain (which I believe is a literal form of self-worship and is not only proper but necessary), he will do what Rand called "blank out." Once again, though, it is not blanking out. It is literally not seeing. You cannot integrate something that is not present. (Blanking out exists, but I don't believe it is the problem most of the time.)

Nobody can completely turn off his cognitive capacity on everything for very long, so this is where the rationalizations start. This is also where a person looks at a fact and later reports it in a distorted manner, fully believing he is being accurate.

All this is just speculation right now, but I think I am on to something. If PARC has had any value for me up to now, it has not been Rand's journal entries so much as prompting me to think about these issues.

Michael

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Ah, James Valliant, an endless font of hapless humour.

If you want to know how he gets on outside of his weird little bubble, there is always this memorable encounter over at Richard Dawkins site, where we get to see how much he actually knows about topics such as science and economics. Needless to say, after some amusing obfuscations he does not last long.

He eventually gets caught in a hopeless lie about Ayn Rand's alleged influence on important scientists by Physicist Dave, to which Valliant's only response is to run away as fast his little legs can carry him...;-)

Edited by Daniel Barnes
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Robert Campbell writes on SOLO (see):

Keep in mind, though, that she was still engaging in self-presentation in these entries (some of which she drafted and rewrote).

Is she quoted somewhere in the book saying of one or more entry that it was a rewrite of a draft, or is this your surmise from the length and formal style of some of the entries?

Ellen

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Ellen,

I'll have to look it up, if you want a page reference in PARC.

But Rand had a long-standing habit of drafting and rewriting major journal entries, and there are occasional references in PARC to one entry being a sketch or preliminary version of another.

Isn't the big entry from early July 1968 prefaced with an outline?

Robert Campbell

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Daniel links to:

this memorable encounter over at Richard Dawkins site [...].

Unfortunately, after that exchange had finished (except for a couple later stray comments), the Dawkins-site server crashed and when the site was brought back up, formatting had been lost on previous posts. The thread is now hard to follow with special-character gibberish obfuscating the flow.

Ellen

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James Heaps-Nelson writes (see):

Robert, if I was around in 1968, I would not have signed the statement that Peikoff, Blumenthal, Sures and Greenspan signed. They didn't have evidence and they certainly didn't know all the circumstances.

Again (I've drawn attention to this two or three times before), Allan Blumenthal was in a different knowledge category from the other three. He, unlike the others, knew particulars. Nathaniel had been sent for some therapy sessions with Allan prior to the break, and Allan was there at the final scene.

Even given that he had background information the others lacked, I think that Allan B., along with the other three, is to be faulted for signing an irrevocable condemnation and repudiation. The wording of the statement makes it one which I wouldn't have signed however much I knew about the details. Nonetheless, on the grounds of his greater awareness of what was involved, I think that Allan is less to be faulted than the others.

AR, on the other hand, I think is to be faulted for any part she played in the wording of the "irrevocably" clause (even if her part was just that of accepting the wording), and for permitting a statement with that clause to appear in a magazine under her aegis.

(Both Allan B. and Alan G., of course, later revoked the irrevocable in Barbara's case -- and I think Alan G. had subsequent contact with Nathaniel as well.)

Here, again, for the record is the wording of "For the Record":

The Objectivist

Volume 7, Number 5

May 1968, pg. 9

FOR THE RECORD

September, 1968

We, the undersigned, former Associate Lecturers at Nathaniel Branden Institute, wish the following to be on record: Because Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden, in a series of actions, have betrayed fundamental principles of Objectivism, we condemn and repudiate these two persons irrevocably, and have terminated all association with them and with Nathaniel Branden Institute.

Allan Blumenthal

Alan Greenspan

Leonard Peikoff

Mary Ann (Rukavina) Sures

Ellen

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