Another view of Leonard Peikoff

[Chris Grieb]

The oral tradition in Objectivism is baffling.

I must add that Roger Bissell getting the Basic course into print is a great idea. The same with Barbara's course.

[Philip Coates]

William, Neil, Chris and others:

One problem with transcribing lectures might be that Peikoff designed them for and gave them to those already with familiarity with the novels and with some of the jargon of Objectivism. If there is a line "Philosopher X is a pure primacy-of-consciousness thinkeer" or makes a joke about what's wrong with modern art, those would require a lot of explaining to a non-Oist audience.

"What in God's name is 'primacy of consciousness'? Is that a new rock music group?" :-)

Maybe even a whole mini-lecture on some of these points...or he -- or an editor with a foot in both worlds and without a tin ear -- would simply have to remove the above 'reinforcing shorthand'. [This is also a problem in OPAR; don't know about Ominous Parallels.]

So, while putting -everything- in print can and should be done, else it remains cult or 'mystery' knowledge, there would probably be a significant amount of work involved. I would have to hear the lectures again to know how much.

(I wonder if this is an issue for transcribing the Branden courses, right now . . . and if the audience is supposed to be Oist-knowledgeable or Oist-friendly or simply the college student off the street?)

[Newberry]

Chris: "The oral tradition in Objectivism is baffling."

I don't think that this oral tradition is unique to any group. It's just like a college course. But very few teachers turn their courses into books. For the conscientious, books are a big investment of time, which often requires more than what one has available.

Michael

Edit: my posting overlapped Phil's, he makes a similar point very well.

Edited July 30, 2008 by Newberry

[Philip Coates]

**A Militant Refusal to Enter the 15th Century**

> This aural tradition is one of those things that strikes me as bizarre. [WSS]

You've heard of people who are stuck in the 19th Century, don't know how to drive a car or operate a computer or cellphone? What about a whole intellectual movement which is stuck in the 14th Century? Are they likely to have an impact?

There was once a man named Gutenberg. After him, intellectual materials would no longer be 'lost' or ignored or buried, ideas could be referred back to, underlined, carefully studied repeatedly if complex, referenced and built upon by other thinkers . . . And civilization and the world of ideas changed.

Both ARI and TAS are still largely in the tape-selling business. Haven't checked both sites recently, but I think spoken material plus copies of Rand's novels available at any Barnes and Noble may still be the bulk of their somewhat misnamed "book" service inventory.

Oh, I forgot: they've both upgraded their technology to CD's. WOW!! Maybe we can go back to an age even before Gutenberg invented the printing press and limit the audience and the impact on the culture even more:

Smoke signals? Cuneiform on clay tablets? (whoops, no, that's actual written material...too close to printing.)

.....

And when is the one major book that we've waited, what? ten years? for from Kelley and Thomas "the Logical Structure of Objectivism" going to be published? Will it take longer than OPAR?

[Roger Bissell]

**A Militant Refusal to Enter the 15th Century**

when is the one major book that we've waited, what? ten years? for from Kelley and Thomas "the Logical Structure of Objectivism" going to be published? Will it take longer than OPAR?

Kelley and Thomas actually put out a printed "beta" version of their book almost 10 years ago. I've seen it. It's not bad. But it's not great either. You might think they should have published it and taken their lumps, like Peikoff with OPAR. And moved on. And done a 2nd edition, if needed.

The basic problem I see with this book, however, is that it's neither fish nor fowl, audience-wise. It wouldn't work as a college text, except at an Objectivist college -- and how many of ~those~ are there?? And it won't work as a general-interest text on Objectivism, because it's too technical. It seems designed as a training manual for young Objectivist intellectuals, and there have been a (probably) distressing number of them jumping ship from TOC/TAS in recent years. Perhaps K & T are wondering whether it's worth the effort...

Kelley has put out three editions of his logic text, which I think is also good, but not great. (I think that he badly drops the ball on the issue of "Existential Import.")

Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses is VERY good, but much more technical. I don't think it needs a revision at all. He got a bull's-eye first time out with that one. :thumbsup:

On the other side of the aisle, Harriman is moving expeditiously on his ~two~ books. One is on the influence of modern philosophy on physics and is titled The Anti-Copernican Revolution -- and the other is a presentation of Peikoff's theory of induction and is titled The Inductive Method in Physics.

The sooner these two books come out, the sooner we will stop hearing Balefully Spouts-off blurting out his "refutations" of induction and instead take aim at some stationary targets. :poke:

Binswanger is working on a book on consciousness, which I think will be quite good -- or at least, a nice clear target at which to shoot. He is a good thinker and writer, though I think he has taken some petty little potshots at Henry B. Veatch and the Aristotelians and Thomists, and he also wrote very sloppily about the mind-body and free will problems in his monograph.

I'm currently listening to Binswanger's series on logic, which is quite good--though, again, I think he aggrandizes more credit than is appropriate to Objectivism for identifying that logic consists not just of inference (deductive, at that), but of three branches: concepts, propositions, and inference. Veatch, for one, in his Intentional Logic, laid this all out over 50 years ago.

FWIW, I am organizing my thoughts for a large JARS essay on logic and "the objective." The working title is "What's in Your File-Folder? The Unit-Perspective and the Unity of Logic." It will address some of the issues that have bugged me over the years concerning the Objectivist theory of concepts, the virtually non-existent Objectivist theory of propositions, and the perennially recurring debates over the meaning of the Objectivist axioms.

As for general surveys or introductions to Objectivism, I honestly think that both OPAR and The DIM Hypothesis are (or will be) worthwhile, clarifying reading, even with their shortcomings and errors. (OPAR badly needs a second edition, but I doubt that any of the quarrels I have with it would ever be considered in making changes.)(DIM badly needs a better title. I suggest: "A DIM view of our troubled culture--and why there's hope for a brighter future.")

But for sheer, ballsy, crystal-clear follow-up reading to Atlas Shrugged, for newcomers to Objectivism, I can't imagine a better place to start than Nathaniel's "Basic Principles" book, coming soon to an internet book service near you! :cheer:

REB

[Robert Campbell]

Peter and Roger,

I stand corrected on this. The passage in Galt's speech moves rather quickly to axioms, but the first couple of paragraphs make a clear statement on stolen concepts. The fact remains that references to Nathaniel Branden's 1963 article were later removed from a couple of Ayn Rand's articles.

The reason I don't think that it's a good idea to attribute certain parts of Objectivism directly to Ayn Rand, without written evidence to that effect, is that portions of Leonard Peikoff's 1991 book are devoted to the doctrine of the arbitrary assertion, for which we have virtually nothing from Ayn Rand herself, and the doctrine of the pre-moral choice to live, which can be taken to follow from "Causality vs. Duty," but is not spelled out there, or in anything else of Rand's own.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

WSS,

I of course agree with you and Phil Coates that both ARI and TAS need to get the hell out of the oral tradition.

Chapters from David Harriman's book are appearing in The Objective Standard (I believe he's done four now). Mr. Harriman hasn't gotten to 20th century physics, yet, and that's where the most trouble is to be expected, but at least he's moving along with his project.

I doubt that any of Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum speeches has escaped some kind of print presentation, though some are hard to find because they were kept out of the posthumous anthologies.

The Q&A sections are another matter. Bits and pieces have appeared in Ayn Rand Answers, but we now know, from looking closely at a couple of her more controversial statements right here at OL, how badly Bob Mayhew tampered with some of them.

While the publication of some of Leonard Peikoff's lectures would be helpful, I honestly think that keeping some of his post-OPAR lectures out of print will protect his reputation from further damage.

Robert Campbell

[william.scherk]

While the publication of some of Leonard Peikoff's lectures would be helpful, I honestly think that keeping some of his post-OPAR lectures out of print will protect his reputation from further damage.

Gee, what a terrible thing to say about the good doctor. Did you know that this would cause you to be banned from a) Noodlefood, b) The Forum, c) Objectivism Online?

That said, here is my teeny little effort towards rendering the good doctor's wisdom into print. This passage comes from Peikoff's most recent Q&A podcast, dated July 28 (I note that in his previous Q&A, recorded at the Vatican Conclave earlier this month, he told his audience that everything he knew about physics he learned from David Harriman):

Q: Modern scientific consensus has it that there was some beginning point to the universe. Would that not then put our understanding of the axiom of existence into a contradiction with the widely accepted Big Bang theory?

A: You bet it would. Absolute contradiction between a good deal of modern physics and the Objectivist philosophy. Now it is true that philosophy cannot reach scientific truth. Philosophy does not use experimentation -- it does not use mathematics, it has no means of establishing the laws of nature.

Philosophy certainly has a veto power over any subject if it violates principles established philosophically. So, if Heisenberg says for instance in the principle of uncertainty that causality is a myth or has been overturned on the subatomic level, you can throw out Heisenberg's theory on that grounds alone. And the same is true for the idea of something proceeding out of nothing. In other words, that is something proceeding causelessly, because there was nothing before it and it violates the very meaning of nothing. Nothing is nothing, it has no potentiality, there is no there to become. It simply is the book of Genesis rewritten by people who are entirely within the philosophy of religion and want to posture as scientists.

Now, if you consult Dave Harriman's course, you will see that quantum mechanics, the theory of everything, string theory, is riddled with contradictions and is arbitrary, 'cause it reflects the corrupt epistemology dominant in the intellectual world. So you cannot decide that that is the standard by which to judge philosophy. Put it another way – science is not what scientists say. Science is what scientists say if they use a rational methodology, but scientists, even in their capacity as holding chairs at universities, can be – and a great many of them are – as irrational, dishonest and corrupt as in any other field.

Now, I'll give you an example of that same mentality that science is what scientists say. I had a philosophy professor once who came in and said, "Here's a definition: matter is what physicists study." So, I raised my hand and asked him "How do physicists know what to study?" He said, "They find out from other physicists. So I said, "Well, how do the first physicists know?" He said, "There was no first physicist." So I said, "Well, did the second come first?" and he said "Yes."

Now, that is the mentality of science is what scientists say.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have a small mini-course by Peikoff on writing (4 cassette tapes). I stopped listening after the second tape. I remember the lecture started out strong, then suddenly it started to go South. Real South. I can't remember my objection anymore. I only remember the impact it had on me.

I might listen again to comment precisely on the principles he advocated as proper writing that I found so weak—weak enough to be a deal-killer on listening to the rest. I do remember that it was not just a comment. It was something he was insisting on and elaborating. I literally lost interest.

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Philosophy certainly has a veto power over any subject if it violates principles established philosophically. So, if Heisenberg says for instance in the principle of uncertainty that causality is a myth or has been overturned on the subatomic level, you can throw out Heisenberg's theory on that grounds alone. And the same is true for the idea of something proceeding out of nothing. In other words, that is something proceeding causelessly, because there was nothing before it and it violates the very meaning of nothing. Nothing is nothing, it has no potentiality, there is no there to become. It simply is the book of Genesis rewritten by people who are entirely within the philosophy of religion and want to posture as scientists.

This is simply embarassing. One has to understand the mathematics and the actual claims being made by cosmologists in order to oppose them as invalid. There is no such thing as a "veto." Science, unlike the in-house manoeuvering of the ARI crowd, is not politics. To speak of a veto, rather than of an objection or disproof, is the height of social metaphysics.

Scientisists do not make the naive claim that the big bang amounts to something coming out of nothing. There was no nothing. There was no time, and hence no time in which something could "come out of" nothing. The problem is that we do not imagine spacetime as curved, but as flat. We can make the conventional mistake of thinking that as with a flat earth, there would have to be an infitie amount of space in any direction, or an edge. But one can't go south forever. Not because there is an edge, but because, like spacetime in higher dimensions, the surface of the earth is not flat, but is curved in three dimensions. We don't deal with higher dimensions at our scale. This does not mean that the way we think at our local "flat" scale can be generalized to the planet or to the universe.

Peikoff is in effect saying that the surface of the earth must continue forever, because he knows that it can't have an edge. He's mistakenly smuggling in the fully understandable but false assumption that there's something before time, as if claiming that there must always be something further to the south, since in our daily experience there's alwasy more room to the south. But there isn't anything south of the south pole - not because there is a reified nothing - but because the world is a spehre, not flat, and the idea of south of the south pole is incoherent. Likewise, there is no "before" the beinning of spacetime, and hence no time or space before the big bang in which to fear that there was a reified nothing existing. The failure here is not in the scientific theories, but in Peikoff's misunderstanding of them. The only religious faith is Peikoff's in his own omniscience and infallibility. He really should have had the confidence to remain silent, rather than to open mouth and remove all doubt.

[Greybird]

Oh, I forgot: [ARI and TAS have] both upgraded their technology to CDs. WOW!! [...]

As pointed and appropriate as the general sarcasm may be, about an oral culture that Rand did not believe in (she had her lecture texts published), this bit of it is misplaced.

Compact discs are qualitatively different from cassette tapes, and share one of the most important aspects of books, in being a genuine random-access medium. You can go to any time increment on a CD as precisely as you can go to any page and paragraph in a book. More importantly, this can not only be cited, but also be readily retrieved.

Cassette tapes are more akin to the scrolls that preceded bound books. (Which did, o'course, long precede Gutenberg.) Any point in the presentation can be reached, but the medium is not designed for such sampling, and the overhead in physical actions doesn't permit ready reference.

Tapes and scrolls are well-suited to making a linear presentation, intended to be heard in full. Or — as with the ornamental Torah in any synagogue — for putting equal physical emphasis on every part of a sacred or prized text. (This last has its O-culture resonances as well {rueful smile})

CDs permit what turns out to be a helpful compromise between the difficulties of conversion to a text and the need for access and citation. They're no substitute for a fully developed written argument that can bypass the overhead (and more casual nature) of being presented to an audience. Yet they're better than tapes — they're at least accessible.

[Greybird]

WSS quotes Lennie:

[...] Philosophy certainly has a veto power over any subject if it violates principles established philosophically. So, if Heisenberg says for instance in the principle of uncertainty that causality is a myth or has been overturned on the subatomic level, you can throw out Heisenberg's theory on that grounds alone.

Hegel said it better and more compactly: "So schwerer für die Tatsache." (Colloquially: When reality conflicts with my theory, well, "so much, then, for reality.")

But I don't think Lennie would appreciate seeing this being pointed out, to say the least ...

[Robert Campbell]

Ted,

It gets worse.

In the past, Leonard Peikoff has claimed that

(1) The universe is finite, but of course this doesn't mean that the universe has an outside.

(2) The universe is eternal, i.e., is not in time. Rather, time is in the universe.

These views don't actually require Dr. Peikoff to interpret the Big Bang as either

• the beginning of the entire universe

or

• creation ex nihilo

Of course, he also has a longstanding Parmenidean obsession with empty space, which he claims would be Nothing, and therefore cannot exist.

The going is going to get much rougher for Mr. Harriman, when he tries to make good on Dr. Peikoff's denunciation of quantum mechanics and subsequent developments.

Dr. Peikoff has been using that line about physics being whatever physicists study for 35 years. It showed up in his history of modern philosophy lectures, under Pragmatism, originally as an illustration of the assertion made by some (unnamed) pragmatists that "reality is indeterminate prior to inquiry." Was it Sidney Hook that he had the exchange with, or someone else at NYU? Some people would know, but I'm not one of them.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Gee, what a terrible thing to say about the good doctor. Did you know that this would cause you to be banned from a) Noodlefood, B) The Forum, c) Objectivism Online?

WSS,

My article on "The Peikovian doctrine of the arbitrary assertion," due out in the Fall 2008 issue of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, quotes from a 1997 lecture on "the arbitrary" where, IMHO, Leonard Peikoff jumps the rails. And the portions that I quote in the article are on topic.

In passages I refrained from quoting, he launches into a couple of extended rants against every K through 12 teacher and every professor in the entire United States of America.

If my primary goal had been to make him look bad, I would have included some of that stuff as well.

Robert Campbell

[kiaer.ts]

"'Cosmology' has to be thrown out of philosophy" Rand's Journals, p698, emphasis original. Further:

"...the Thales-Plato school was merely a case of "arrested empiricists," that is, men who "rationalized" on the ground of taking partial knowledge as omniscience." p699

"[Aristotle] destroyed his metaphysics by his cosmology..." ibid.

"Existence exists is all there is to metaphysics. All the rest is epistemology." ibid.

Rand obviously knew the dangers of armchair physics. These statements were from 1958. Perhaps Peikoff hadn't heard them then, but you'd think he'd have read her journals since publication.

As a matter of fact, I do believe that some cosmology is necessary, in the sense of Lucretius, in order to remove worries. But this minimal Epicurean need for cosmology (to understand our place in the universe, and its know ability) need not be based on a priori rationalization.

Given Peikoff's ravings about creationism, it seems that, as with Ominous Parallels and his 'he that is not with me is against me' pontifications his hysteria is based more on a fear of the hidden motivations of others than an understanding of the issues involved.

As for Hook, I myself only learned of Rand in 1984, and have only attended one lecture by HB. After that, I stayed away until I heard of Kelley's apostasy through the internet in the 90's.

[Robert Campbell]

Ted,

Sidney Hook was Leonard Peikoff's dissertation adviser at New York University. Hook was a pragmatist, though I know little of his particular brand of pragmatist epistemology.

Robert Campbell

[Nicholas Dykes]

With reference to the 'stolen concept', another who anticipated Rand was the German Max Stirner, in his book The Ego and Its Own. He wrote that if all property is theft -- the Proudhon example used by Nathaniel Branden in his TON article -- then no well-founded objection could be made against theft.

However, I think Rand deserves the credit for identifying the fallacy and naming it, and NB for making it public. It is a very valuable tool to have in one's kit. E.g., the common assertion that all ethical judgements are subjective falls flat because it is not possible to identify something as subjective without the prior concept of the objective.

Nicholas Dykes

[Neil Parille]

Nicholas,

You said:

However, I think Rand deserves the credit for identifying the fallacy and naming it, and NB for making it public. It is a very valuable tool to have in one's kit. E.g., the common assertion that all ethical judgements are subjective falls flat because it is not possible to identify something as subjective without the prior concept of the objective.

Even if we've only identified examples of the stolen concept before Rand, I find it hard to imagine that she was the first to idetify it. It's really just a version of begging the question.

-NEIL

____

[Dragonfly]

However, I think Rand deserves the credit for identifying the fallacy and naming it, and NB for making it public. It is a very valuable tool to have in one's kit. E.g., the common assertion that all ethical judgements are subjective falls flat because it is not possible to identify something as subjective without the prior concept of the objective.

That's a non sequitur. The statement that all ethical judgements are subjective does not imply that there are no objective statements.

[Neil Parille]

I imagine (but don't know) that Prodhoun's statement was rhetorical.

-NEIL

____

[Nicholas Dykes]

I think you're at least partly right Neil, because although Proudhon was a communist anarchist he was not entirely opposed to private property. I think he was referring to landed property, which in Europe was intitially acquired by conquest, hence stolen. As you say, though, I think he was mostly aiming to be controversial with a view to making people think. Nicholas.

[Nicholas Dykes]

However, I think Rand deserves the credit for identifying the fallacy and naming it, and NB for making it public. It is a very valuable tool to have in one's kit. E.g., the common assertion that all ethical judgements are subjective falls flat because it is not possible to identify something as subjective without the prior concept of the objective.

That's a non sequitur. The statement that all ethical judgements are subjective does not imply that there are no objective statements.

Sorry, I don't understand you. Your implication does not seem to follow from what I said. The statement 'all ethical judgements are subjective' doesn't assert or deny the existence of objective judgments elsewhere. But perhaps I'm not thinking clearly. It's past midnight here and I'm off to bed. 'Night. Nicholas

[Dragonfly]

Sorry, I don't understand you. Your implication does not seem to follow from what I said. The statement 'all ethical judgements are subjective' doesn't assert or deny the existence of objective judgments elsewhere.

Well, in that case there is nothing wrong with that statement. There is a prior concept of the objective. It just doesn't apply to some areas, such as ethics or artistic taste.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There is a prior concept of the objective. It just doesn't apply to some areas, such as ethics or artistic taste.

(sigh)

1. If you do things that kill you, you die.

2. Any child can easily learn a major scale in music and use it to anchor musical ideas like melody. It can let you easily identify melodies and when one is reproduced correctly or if there is a sour note. Almost nobody can learn a dodecaphonic sequence and recognize when it is right or wrong in a composition.

These are two objective standards based on law of causality in the first case and law of identity in the second that apply respectively to ethics and artistic taste.

That's just off the top of my head.

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Is it or is it not objectively immoral to pretend that there is such a thing as an objective morality?

The explicit identification of the stolen concept, and the hierarchical theory of concept formation which Rand put forth, is the essence of her philosophy, and her greatest achievement.

Michael, I sanctioned your last post.

Robert, thanks for your, as always, interesting comments.