[Ted Keer]

Can anyone identify who the participants were in the seminar on Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, a transcript of which was included in the second edition? I would appreciate comments, a link, and do not necessarily need to know which letter was which participant. Thanks.

[Jonathan]

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...post&p=5826

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

To make it easier for readers, since the thread asks the question so openly, here is the post you linked to.

Michael

Ellen Stuttle, on Jun 25 2006, 09:00 PM, said:

Kat asked for the names of those present at the
Epistemology Workshops. Here's what I have.

Quoted participants:

A - Harry Binswanger

B - Allan Gotthelf

C - Nick Bykovetz

D - John O. (?) Nelson

E - Leonard Peikoff

F - George Walsh

G - Fred Weiss

H - Mike Berliner

I - Gary Lockman

J - John Allen

K - Al Jakira

L - Tony Plasil

M - Larry (Laurence) Gould

Also listed as auditors who aren't recorded
as having said anything in the edited volume:

Erich Veyhl

Robert Hartford

And as guests:

Allan Blumenthal

Joan Blumenthal

Erika Holzer

Henry Holzer

Frank O'Connor


The identities of A - E have been agreed on by three sources: Larry, George Walsh -- in a phone conversation between him and Larry June 16, 1990 -- and someone I know who saw sections of the original transcripts, and the list of participants, at the archives.

M is of course attested to by himself; Larry forgot to write down when he was talking with George which one George was, but figured out that George was F.

Some of the other names George and Larry had remembered but didn't know which letters they were. Others both had forgotten.

Some of the people weren't present for all of the workshops. I don't have a breakdown by attendance. Larry wasn't there for the first one. He's not sure without digging out his notes (which are in a storage place difficult to access) whether he started attending at the 2nd or 3rd gathering.

According to Leonard Peikoff's "Foreward to the Second Edition" (copyrighted 1990 by Estate of Ayn Rand) there were a total of "four workshops [...] between 1969 and 1971." I don't have the exact dates immediately to hand.

Peikoff writes in the Introduction:

"The workshops were opportunities for a dozen professionals in philosophy, plus a few in physics and mathematics, to ask Miss Rand questions about her theory of concepts, which had first appeared in print in her own magazine, The Objectivist, in 1966-67."

The abbreviation "Prof." used for all quoted participants (except AR, who's abbreviated as "AR") I supposed can be interpreted as an abbreviation of "professional" rather than of "Professor." Only a few of the participants would have properly qualified for the title "professor" at the time. The majority were qraduate students; a couple were undergrads.

Fred Weiss has been raising doubts on the re-activated Rage thread on SOLO as to (a) whether he was a participant at all; and if so (b ) if he was "G." Short of his outright denying that he did participate and was "G," I'll proceed on the belief, as I told him on SOLO, "that my source copied the initials correctly and that the archival records are correct."

Ellen

___

[Ted Keer]

Thanks, gentlemen. Why am I not surprised that I would find an answer here?

[Chris Grieb]

Michael Stuart Kelly, on Jan 17 2009, 10:07 PM, said:

Jonathan,

To make it easier for readers, since the thread asks the question so openly, here is the post you linked to.

Michael

Ellen Stuttle, on Jun 25 2006, 09:00 PM, said:

Kat asked for the names of those present at the
Epistemology Workshops. Here's what I have.

Quoted participants:

A - Harry Binswanger

B - Allan Gotthelf

C - Nick Bykovetz

D - John O. (?) Nelson

E - Leonard Peikoff

F - George Walsh

G - Fred Weiss

H - Mike Berliner

I - Gary Lockman

J - John Allen

K - Al Jakira

L - Tony Plasil

M - Larry (Laurence) Gould

Also listed as auditors who aren't recorded
as having said anything in the edited volume:

Erich Veyhl

Robert Hartford

And as guests:

Allan Blumenthal

Joan Blumenthal

Erika Holzer

Henry Holzer

Frank O'Connor


The identities of A - E have been agreed on by three sources: Larry, George Walsh -- in a phone conversation between him and Larry June 16, 1990 -- and someone I know who saw sections of the original transcripts, and the list of participants, at the archives.

M is of course attested to by himself; Larry forgot to write down when he was talking with George which one George was, but figured out that George was F.

Some of the other names George and Larry had remembered but didn't know which letters they were. Others both had forgotten.

Some of the people weren't present for all of the workshops. I don't have a breakdown by attendance. Larry wasn't there for the first one. He's not sure without digging out his notes (which are in a storage place difficult to access) whether he started attending at the 2nd or 3rd gathering.

According to Leonard Peikoff's "Foreward to the Second Edition" (copyrighted 1990 by Estate of Ayn Rand) there were a total of "four workshops [...] between 1969 and 1971." I don't have the exact dates immediately to hand.

Peikoff writes in the Introduction:

"The workshops were opportunities for a dozen professionals in philosophy, plus a few in physics and mathematics, to ask Miss Rand questions about her theory of concepts, which had first appeared in print in her own magazine, The Objectivist, in 1966-67."

The abbreviation "Prof." used for all quoted participants (except AR, who's abbreviated as "AR") I supposed can be interpreted as an abbreviation of "professional" rather than of "Professor." Only a few of the participants would have properly qualified for the title "professor" at the time. The majority were qraduate students; a couple were undergrads.

Fred Weiss has been raising doubts on the re-activated Rage thread on SOLO as to (a) whether he was a participant at all; and if so (b ) if he was "G." Short of his outright denying that he did participate and was "G," I'll proceed on the belief, as I told him on SOLO, "that my source copied the initials correctly and that the archival records are correct."

Ellen

___

Is the Fred Weiss mentioned in the list the Fred Weiss who is associated with the book service Paper Tiger?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Two of the names in the list are misspelled:

Vehyl should be Veyhl. (That was just a typo.)

Nick Bykovitz I think should be Bykovetz.

The question of how to spell Nick's last name came up elsewhere -- here.

On searching Google, I found a great many physics publications by an "N. Bykovetz" with Temple and U. Penn co-authors. These must be by the same person who was an attendee at the workshop.

Michael, could you correct the spellings? (And you might also want to put Larry's full name -- Laurence -- in parentheses. Note: It's spelled with a u, not a w. I see in Googling that it's been rendered with a w in an h.p.o. discussion of who the people were.)

Chris, yes, the Fred Weiss is the Paper Tiger Fred Weiss.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Done, not only in this thread but in the original post. I mentioned the correction and referenced your request there.

Michael

[Reidy]

Was the Nelson in your list the philosopher at U. Colorado who wrote some articles for The Objectivist? As far as I know he was the only person who knew both Rand and Wittgenstein.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Thanks, Michael.

Peter, the Nelson was a philosophy professor. He was one of the 2 who were already professionally established before learning of Rand, the other being George Walsh. I don't recall his university affiliation -- he'd have had to have been in the East at least visiting at the time of the workshops. I've always assumed he was the same person who wrote some pieces for The Objectivist. I don't think I ever met him.

Ellen

___

[Stephen Boydstun]

Ralph C. Nelson received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1961 from the University of Notre Dame. His thesis was Jacques Maritain’s Conception of Moral Philosophy Adequately Considered. He was a professor in the PoliSci department at University of Windsor from 1963 to 1993. He died last July.

A few of his works are these:

Co-Editor of recent edition of Yves Simon’s Foresight and Knowledge.

Translator of Jean-Louis Allard’s Education for Freedom: The Philosophy of Education of Jacques Maritain.

Author of “Yves R. Simon’s Philosophy of Science” in Acquaintance with the Absolute: The Philosophy of Yves R. Simon.

Author of “On the Philosophy of Organism” in Maritain Studies.

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

Ellen, is this man likely Professor D?
Perhaps he was visiting at Fordham.

(The Nelson at Colorado was John O. Nelson.)

This post has been edited by Stephen Boydstun: 23 January 2009 - 08:21 AM

[Chris Grieb]

John O. Nelson published an article in the August '69 Objectivist titled The Freedom of the Hippie and the Yippie. In a note about the Aurthur Nelson is described as "recognized by the profession as a distinguished philosopher of logic and science" The final sentence states "Professor Nelson agrees with the basic principles of Objectivism in ethics and politics."

I think the above was a major case of exception making.

[Reidy]

John sounds likelier than Ralph as a participant.

I heard him at a conference at USC in 1970 in which he presented a most eccentric argument justifying government's monopoly on coercion by an analogy to Russell's theory of types (which Objectivism considers the work of Satan). The event is probably best remembered for Nozick's "On the Randian Argument," his public coming-out as a libertarian.

[Ellen Stuttle]

John sounds more likely to me, too, from the descriptions.

Larry doesn't remember for sure. We wrote down "Ralph" when Larry and George Walsh compared notes, but maybe George said the wrong first name, knowing of both Ralph and John???

I did a Google search on the code words: "Ralph Nelson" Objectivism.

Aside from links to and deriving from my own original post here, I found an entry for a film director named Ralph Nelson whom Rand might have known by name:

Quote

Link

Largely Forgotten Independent Film Director Ralph Nelson and His 1972 Cult Western "The Wrath of God"
November 22, 2007 by Stephen Murray 

[...]

Ralph Nelson (1916-1987) is never mentioned when cineastes talk about auteurs (directors with a distinctive vision), but, during the 1960s, Nelson directed a string of independent films that I love, most of which deal with complex human relationships (mostly nonsexual male-male ones). The best-known and widely beloved are "Lilies of the Field" (1963) in which Sidney Poitier won a best actor Oscar and "Charly" (1968) in which Cliff Robertson did. (Nelson also directed many episodes of what was my favorite tv drama series during the mid-1960s, "The Defenders." E. G. Marshall won two Emmies as the older lawyer on that.)

Here's another interesing find I came up with when searching first just on: Nelson Objectivism:

Quote

Link

Objectivism and History in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead,
July 11, 2007 by Asna Ansari

I'll ask my friend who saw the listing at the archives if he's sure of the correct first name.

Ellen

___

[Neil Parille]

Speaking of ITOE, for those who are interested in how professional philosophers view Rand, William Vallicella has been critiquing Rand & ITOE here --

http://maverickphilo...ck_philosopher/

-Neil

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Neil,

I looked it over, but I was not too impressed. This guy spends an awful lot of time setting up a strawman enemy called "Randians" (with the implicit meaning that all people who agree with Objectivist principles are the same), attributes blunders and so forth to this collective, then heroically demolishes them.

Oh yes. He likes to congratulate himself implicitly on his astuteness.

In fact, if you make adjustments for a change in tone, he does exactly what he accuses Rand of.

The only thing I really agree with him on is that he doesn't like debating obnoxious Objectivists.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

I asked my friend who saw the Archive's list of the ITOE participants. He says he's "pretty sure" that the Nelson who participated was John O. Nelson.

This certainly is more plausible in terms of the respective backgrounds of John O. and Ralph, so I think it's likely that George Walsh had a memory mix-up and said the wrong first name when he and Larry were comparing notes.

Michael, could you again edit the original post and the copy on this thread? Since the original post is linked to as a source on several other sites, I'd like for it to be accurate.

But since I'm not positive of the identity of the "Nelson," I suggest writing his name as (until and unless someone definitely verifies which Nelson it was):

John O. (?) Nelson

Thanks in advance.

Ellen

___

[Brant Gaede]

Didn't John O. Nelson have an article in The Objectivist? And I think he was at the University of Denver at the time. Maybe Peikoff knew him while he himself was at the same school around 1965.

--Brant

[Reidy]

Nelson was at the Univeristy of Colorado (presumably Boulder), not University of Denver. He could have known Peikoff in those days, but his public flirtation with Objectivism came a few years after Peikoff moved back to New York. #11 mentions his article for The Objectivist.

[Dragonfly]

Brant Gaede, on Jan 25 2009, 10:42 PM, said:

Didn't John O. Nelson have an article in The Objectivist?

Yes, The "freedom" of the hippie and the yippie, in volume 8 number 8, August 1969.

Quote

And I think he was at the University of Denver at the time.

Professor Nelson...teaches philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder...Professor Nelson agrees with the basic principles of Objectivism in ethics and politics.

[Thom T G]

Hi there. How reliable is this list of names, particularly in their ordering of the first handful?

There is a commenter at another blog who seriously questioned whether Allan Gotthelf was Prof. B. This commenter thought he had heard Harry Binswanger saying that the latter had asked Ayn Rand how she had arrived at her measurement-omission theory. I presume the former had heard this at a live lecture from long ago, and I take his comment to be credible.

Do we know for sure Allan Gotthelf asked Ayn Rand at the end of the workshop how she arrived at her theory of concept-formation? Ellen, does your anonymous third source have knowledge of this? Alternately, if this comment is to be believed--that it may have been Harry Binswanger who was Prof. B--can someone corroborate this claim by going through all of Binswanger's audio lectures?