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Well worth a listen are two recently-uploaded visual-radio pieces from ARI's Youtube channel. I wish a few of our founding-people regulars were still around to masticate this lecture. My first impression was that Binswanger is both precise and sloppy: the lack of 'show notes' or references makes it cloudy where exactly he is relying upon someone else's work. He implicitly invokes both Plutchik and Ekman, but does not say their names, rubbishing one, but basing his next ten minutes on the other. The oral-aural culture is weird in the Objectivist traditions. One of the not-so-unfair criticisms of Ayn Rand's occasional essays are the lack of citation where they would really help: who is she talking about? Same with Peikoff in OPAR, which is in part why I think that one hit the wall several times before I could finish reading it. So with these two, I build up a charge of questions for a Q & A that doesn't happen ... yet. Since Binswanger usually operates from a subscriber-maintained walled garden, it is interesting for him to put his wonk out for general feedback -- instead of within his Loyalty Cult. The ARI channel doesn't seem all that well-visited, but it has open comments. I'd love to get Marsha Enright and Steve Shmurak on a five-way discussion via Skype one day discussing these Binswanger tapes; I think they likely have paid the five bucks at an earlier time for a three-hour MP3, or and that the lecture has already had a round of critiques. Lazy me hasn't noted yet when it was first struck as an independent essay or reading or whatever we might call this genre. So, Enright, Shmurak, Boydstun, and I think Robert Campbell. I would be not other than host and sound-board monitors, at most a compere, so that leaves one other person I am missing. Who am I missing? [ADDED: I put out feelers to the trio above on Facebook, with a query about how old this item is. I could probably look that up myself, but why not be social?]

I came across an entry at the place called "Rational Wiki." The biases of the wiki are evidently left-wing, if not progressive, if not evul. Ostensibly ... Here's the loaded language page header (click through). One of the more fraught uses of 'prejudicial language' is identified as "snarl words." Isn't using 'snarl words' part of the fun of online discussion? -- surveying the Wiki site's entries, it made me think of a kind of weight in Ayn Rand's language in both fiction and non-fiction. Is there anything objectively wrong with using heavily-laden emotive words in argument? Doesn't using so-called loaded language offer a short-cut or end-point of a long line of reasoning? Why not 'snarl' at ideological 'enemies'?

The topic of emotion in Randland has always interested me. My very first point of contact with Objectivish things online was the place of emotion in cognition. It is interesting to find myself in rough agreement with Michael all these years later. In the midst of a very intriguing conversation with my favourite South African Randian, this by MSK: It's not really fair to truncquote this bit, but readers can plunge back into the front porch thread to gain the flow of discussion, and the hinge-point of disagreement. But besides that, I think I can add a clarifying point in response to this (highlights added): This describes a similar-but-not-identical syndrome that I became aware of by reading the work of Antonio Damasio (whom I have mentioned a few too many times ...). Damasio worked with a neurological patient given the code-name "Elliot." I mentioned 'Damasio,' 'emotion,' and 'Elliot' in one post five years ago: The gist was this: "Here is a teaser from a popular article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Feeling our way to decision" -- which I excerpted in the 2012 post ... Back to Michael's post today ... I'd like to find the famous example ... perhaps Michael can introspect hard and come up with the details. -- this is roughly what I began to think when I learned of the case of "Elliot." I won't belabour the point here, since my "too many times" link above shows the same kind of discussion points I would make this time. Without emotion, one's thinking is crippled. An additional knowledge point would be what "emotional intelligence" is missing in psychopaths (and here I plug the brilliant synthesis of research given in Ken Kiehl's book, The Psychopath Whisperer). Here is a brief extract from the 2010 Scientific American Mind article "Inside the Mind of a Psychopath." -- imagine waking up to a world in which none of these bodily feelings were present in mind, but were mostly inaccessible ... and try to figure out which emotional circuits are blunted to the point of disappearance in the "rational" mind of a psychopath.

Objective eyes on November: Roundtable - May 11, 2016 Roger Bissell, Robert Campbell, and William Scott Scherk look through Objective(ish) eyes at the US presidential election. Get to know the spirit, humour and wit of the three amigos in the first of a series. Presented as an audio-only podcast at Conversations with the Greats | Show notes at November Eyes Notes

I started a discussion at a former sister-site, after having posted these my Objections to Objectivism (standing on one foot): wrong on emotion (emotions are not tools of cognition)wrong on language acquisition (a buzzing, blooming confusion)incapable of correction (absolutism of dicta)That venue being barred, and me finding it ironic that Lindsay contemplates sub-contracting discussion (and readership) to OL, it is hard to continue discussion with the others who seemed willing. I leave it to OL members alone to follow my responses that will not appear at the other place, to read my boring rejoinders, research and hooliganism at the blog Friends and Foes. If excerpts show up at the other place, more hilarity will no doubt ensue. In the meantime, are there any other things that can be entertained (at least) as on-one-foot objections? I don't mean as objections necessarity true, but also include objections found false. I was tempted to write "wrong about empathy" or "out of date on language acquisition/cognitive development" but I noticed I had put a foot down while thinking, so wiped the board and started again. I try to bear in mind that when I write Objectivism, it is as if I write Communism, or Conservativism or Liberalism, or Libertarianism or Kantianism. It seems unqualified. It is not. Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, as stated by herself.

This comes with rolling quiz questions, and also clues and hints and helping information. My Name is Mrs Grundy. This is my classroom. Please fasten your harnesses and we will begin. The subject is emotion. The question is, "If we could illustrate our emotions by way of a 'colour wheel,' what would it say?" 1. Here is one image which contains clues, hints, ideas for cheating, and helping information. There are no 'correct' answers (until I unveil them and begin with the Corrective Ruler). Look at the Orange slice of the pie and figure out what is written there. Also please note that the examining magistrate has already seeded the results with two correct answers (and one incorrect one). Good luck. Prizes and Punishments will be announced later. 2. Here is another image. It contains a very good hint and helping information (if you know the purpose to which this image was used in psychological study -- and, better yet, know to what purpose it is used as evidence of the very thing it was used to look for. You do not need to steep in Foucault or Rand to get this helping information. It contains the key to the rest of the exam, and the Central Point of my Joycean Rant. In other words, I give you every opportunity to Cheat Wildly) but also a bit of unhelpful information in these notes. I might be drunk. I might want to entice you into the Torture Classroom.This is Open Book. Beware, this picture contains False Friends, like a page of mugshots that misses suspects entirely. undefined