The Seventh No Name Calling Week Begins

Selene · January 27, 2010

Folks:

I have been receiving these notices for the entire seven (7) years as I am quite active in counseling children and young adults as to dealing with bullying which the pitiful educational system cannot even have a clue as to effectively addressing.

Dear No Name-Calling Week Registrants,

The seventh annual No Name-Calling Week (NNCW) is in full swing! Thousands of educators are leading their students through educational and creative activities aimed at ending name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. If you haven't already, it's not too late to conduct NNCW activities in your school. Some simple ways to celebrate are developing an anti-name-calling classroom policy or screening a student made anti-bullying video. For more tips and ideas, visit the NNCW Resources page.

Another way to participate in NNCW is to engage your students in creating artwork that they can enter into the Creative Expression Contest. This year's Creative Expression Contest is divided into three categories:

· Primary School (Grades K - 5)

· Middle School (Grades 6 - 8)

· High School (Grades 9 - 12)

The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 26.

Over 5,000 NNCW fans are talking about name-calling and bullying on the NNCW Facebook page. Join the conversation on Facebook and talk with other educators participating in NNCW to share tips and ideas.

Sincerely,

Justin Anton Rosado

Education Associate

GLSEN

Visit

www.nonamecallingweek.org to register for updates, download free

lessons and planning tips, and learn more about this year's Creative Expression Contest.

Show your support and become a fan on Facebook.

Visit www.glsenstore.org to purchase NNCW merchandise.

Adam

9thdoctor · January 27, 2010

But when does it start? I’ll need to get some name calling out of my system beforehand, like having a Mardi Gras for put downs. You don't just spring a Lenten fast on someone!

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anthony · January 28, 2010

Ninth Doctor,

Co- incidentally - and serendipitously - I went to the opening of a show celebrating Tom Lehrer's life and music, in Jo'burg two weeks ago. :lol:

The man's a genius.

Thanks

Tony

Selene · January 28, 2010

Tony and 9th:

Here is the other political pianist satirist - geez that somehow sounds sooo kinky, commenting on Lehrer...Mark Russell

They are both brilliant

Adam

Post Script:

Some of Mark's o'biwan the shrinking president as of Oct. 9th 2009...

The Nobel Committee has bestowed the Peace Prize for 2009 on President Obama and all I can say is, it’s about time.

Obama was notified that he was the winner when the folks from Publishers Clearing House showed up at his door.

The Committee cited the Beer Summit in which Obama brought Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police man together.

The Nobel judges also recognize the president’s restraint in not bombing Rio following the Olympics’ announcement.

For snubbing the warmongering Dalai Lama – the list goes on.

But most of all – Barack Obama kept al-Qaeda out of Norway.

Edited January 28, 2010 by Selene

syrakusos · January 28, 2010

At the start of the Winter 2010 semester, one of my professors passed around a sign-up sheet -- name, email, etc., and another column for "other name." He said that we used to call them nicknames, but that is no longer politically correct.

I asked another professor in the same department -- Geography, a new one for me; I never heard this in sociology -- what that meant and he had no idea. So, when we come back to class, next week, I will ask for clarification.

Obviously, on a college campus name-calling includes attaching nicknames to other people and it is just not something you do, old man. (Oh. That's an example. But no one calls me "old man.") It is more or less a blue collar thing, more of a class issue, as the upper classes have their own nicknames like "Sir Reginald" and "Your Majesty" or even calling a priest "father" (minister "reverend"). One of my professors introduced himself as William or Bill or Billy. William would be hard enough for me, at least until I complete a master's but Billy would be out of the question, even though I am a generation older.

That brings up an issue of rank by age. What is appropriate or not, may or may not be differentiable by age. As an instructor for automation projects in factories, I discovered that in the library, the books on training are nowhere near the books on education. Adult education is qualitatively different than pedagogy. I have long since wondered though if childhood education K-12 is not itself wrongheaded. While children are not physically -- biochemically -- adults, what about that is significant for the modalities of learning and teaching? I am not sure. I only know that it seems better to treat children with the respect assumed for adults.

But what about us? I mean, we have soubriquets and usernames and handles and log-ins. You have no idea how often I have had to restrain myself when replying to Ba'al. (Baa-aa--b Kolker.) Ooops, sorry, there, old man...

jeffrey smith · January 28, 2010

At the start of the Winter 2010 semester, one of my professors passed around a sign-up sheet -- name, email, etc., and another column for "other name." He said that we used to call them nicknames, but that is no longer politically correct.
I asked another professor in the same department -- Geography, a new one for me; I never heard this in sociology -- what that meant and he had no idea. So, when we come back to class, next week, I will ask for clarification.
Obviously, on a college campus name-calling includes attaching nicknames to other people and it is just not something you do, old man. (Oh. That's an example. But no one calls me "old man.") It is more or less a blue collar thing, more of a class issue, as the upper classes have their own nicknames like "Sir Reginald" and "Your Majesty" or even calling a priest "father" (minister "reverend"). One of my professors introduced himself as William or Bill or Billy. William would be hard enough for me, at least until I complete a master's but Billy would be out of the question, even though I am a generation older.
That brings up an issue of rank by age. What is appropriate or not, may or may not be differentiable by age. As an instructor for automation projects in factories, I discovered that in the library, the books on training are nowhere near the books on education. Adult education is qualitatively different than pedagogy. I have long since wondered though if childhood education K-12 is not itself wrongheaded. While children are not physically -- biochemically -- adults, what about that is significant for the modalities of learning and teaching? I am not sure. I only know that it seems better to treat children with the respect assumed for adults.
But what about us? I mean, we have soubriquets and usernames and handles and log-ins. You have no idea how often I have had to restrain myself when replying to Ba'al. (Baa-aa--b Kolker.) Ooops, sorry, there, old man...

On nicknames--the political correctness lies in the idea that nicknames must be politically incorrect. But that people choose nicknames for themselves to protect an image of themselves, or just because they don't like their own formal name, doesn' seem to have entered the PC-fanatic brain. My problem with the professor's request seems to be in line with yours: I'm not completely at ease with the preference for informality I wouldn't want to call him William or Billy or Bill; he's not my friend. I'd want to call him Dr. Whatever his last name is. Or sir. I never called a professor of mine by their first name that I can recall, even the ones I was very friendly with.

Of course, at the time I was just barely an adult and they all were at least in their 30s, several of them much older. How I would do it now, I don't know. With colleagues, I am usually on a first name basis, because they call me by my first name.

On how children learn--psychologists say that children learn to think as they grow older; analyzing and use of logic in an adult fashion just doesn't happen until mid or late-adolescence for most kids, which accounts for much of the melodrama of the teenage years--your typical 16 year old is not only learning to deal with adult problems like romance and getting a job; he or she is literally learning how to think at a full mature level. Up to that point he or she has not been learning the way an adult learns. (I have forgotten many of the details over the years since I studied this, but if you are curious, check out books on childhood psychology and childhood education).

Jeffrey S.

Peter · January 29, 2010

Adam quoted:

Dear No Name-Calling Week Registrants,

The seventh annual No Name-Calling Week (NNCW) is in full swing! Thousands of educators are leading their students through educational and creative activities aimed at ending name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.

End quote

Thank you Adam. I sent that to my eldest daughter who teaches 4th grade. She has despised bullying since she was in grammar school. I think something needs to be done. A lot of bullying would not be accepted at any other age. It would be called harassment, stalking, and assault. I just do not buy into the kids will be kids argument.

When I was growing up I was always the best fighter. My Swedish grandfather put up a bar so we could chin ourselves before meals. I may have done a bit of bullying myself, but I also protected a lot of “smart” kids. They were more fun to be around.

I had usually gone to a navy school or a school with a lot of military kids. Those are all civilized. You did not want your Dad to get a call. And military kids seem to truly have a sense of honor.

When I got to the tenth grade, it was hell. I went to a public high school, with multiple Mexican/American gangs but the worst was the “Jock Gang.” They ruled and they truly put people thru hell. My buddy was a judo expert but even he and I were harassed and hammered though nobody ever beat us, thanks to my buddy. His dream was to be a TV repairman and a Hell’s Angel. He got his wish.

My Dad was reassigned because of the Viet Nam war heating up in mid school year which had never happened before, and I left there in April and went to Hawaii. Now that was sweet.

Down with bullying. I hate it.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

Selene · January 29, 2010

Peter:

You are welcome.

My personal opinion is that the effective response, or answer, to bullying is to:

1) learn to defend yourself with a defensive martial art like your friends...I chose tai chi chuan...

"My buddy was a judo expert but even he and I were harassed and hammered though nobody ever beat us, thanks to my buddy."

2) expulsion of a convicted bully and prosecuting them in a criminal court room;

It is just that simple.

Just like "domestic violence". A is A. Violence is violence.

It is absurd to argue that an assault is not an assault because it occurs in a public school.

It is absurd to argue that an assault is not an assault because of a personal relationship between the assaulter and the assaulted.

Moreover, the standard of proof in criminal court is 1) a higher standard; 2) trial by jury as a valid option; and 3) governed by due process.

Adam

Philip Coates · January 30, 2010

Subject: Behavior That's Good for the Child is Good for the Adult

> I am quite active in counseling children and young adults as to dealing with bullying...thousands of educators are leading their students through..activities aimed at ending name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. If you haven't already, it's not too late to conduct NNCW activities in your school. Some simple ways to celebrate are developing an anti-name-calling classroom policy or screening a student made anti-bullying video. [quoited by Adam]

Adam, I get a sardonic chuckle from this:

Why is it that "no name calling" is an appropriate thning to teach children, but when they grow up, it's okay to forget all about it?

And then post on websites like OL where it's okay to use name-calling toward other members?

Or toward other Oists who disagree with one -- Leonard Peikoff, Lindsay P, Barbara Branden, people who have a different position on Ayn Rand's life, etc.?

Edited January 30, 2010 by Philip Coates

Peter · January 31, 2010

Philip Coates wrote Adam:

Why is it that "no name calling" is an appropriate thing to teach children, but when they grow up, it's okay to forget all about it? And then post on websites like OL where it's okay to use name-calling toward other members?

end quote

Good to hear from you Philip. You are right. It does make for a zoo-like discordance at times. I hear the simultaneous roar of the lions, screeches of the chimpanzees, and laughs of the hyenas. Until you stated the obvious I could not see that in myself. I tend to use a sledge hammer to make my points. Civility is . . . uh, OK and what Adam should strive for. And he should stop being a tattle tale. I will probably continue to figuratively shoot, hang, pillory, lethally inject and force my opponents to walk the plank 8 -)

Seriously, I will take what you say to heart. I despise bullies of children. Adults can better take care of themselves, but still, when you agree on ninety-five percent of Objectivism, it is nonsensical to shun a potential ally for the other five percent.

ARI, who will we shun for life? Anarchists, determinists, libertarians, Tolerationists, but also some really bad people like Communists, Racists and Fascists. That is nonsensical to me. A rational scale of value is needed.

This is something to think about: a combined ARI, Nathaniel Branden Institute, and Atlas Society. Splintered, the God of the Machine is weakened. Objectivists Unite!

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

Selene · January 31, 2010

Subject: behavior That's Good for the Child is Good for the Adult
> I am quite active in counseling children and young adults as to dealing with bullying...thousands of educators are leading their students through..activities aimed at ending name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. If you haven't already, it's not too late to conduct NNCW activities in your school. Some simple ways to celebrate are developing an anti-name-calling classroom policy or screening a student made anti-bullying video. [quoited by Adam]
Adam, I get a sardonic chuckle from this:
Why is it that "no name calling" is an appropriate thning to teach children, but when they grow up, it's okay to forget all about it?
And then post on websites like OL where it's okay to use name-calling toward other members?
Or toward other Oists who disagree with one -- Leonard Peikoff, Lindsay P, Barbara Branden, people who have a different position on Ayn Rand's life, etc.?

The origins of the Quoit can be traced back to the very an

Quoits ^^^^

Philly boy:

You are just so gay! Quoiting away.

I guess you can, peer down from your aerie through the clouds at us struggling folks down hear in reality calling each other names. I guess we should apologize for actually having a life which is full of fun, mystery and real people.

I would pose one question to you Ms. Perfect Schoolmarm...

Is it proper to blend a persons quoted phrase and omit the quotes?

Additionally, is it ethical to then place that unquoted material into someone else's material in order to provide a representation that is completely contrary to the quoted, or, in your quaint, queer way "quoited"?

I wonder how bitchy you would get if it was done to you?

Adam

thinking of you always Philly

Peter · January 31, 2010

Adam,

I think your rant against Objectivist Scholar Philip Coates was unwarranted. His letter was respectful and pointed out a basic failing of many people, and not just you.

I dug into my archives and grabbed a sampling of letters Philip has written over the years. His output has been prodigious. I have around a hundred top notch letters from Philip. He is praised, not vilified by the people who responded to him, including some quite famous.

Are you blind? On a thread about no bullying, you are a bully. Your flaming was uncalled for. You owe him an apology.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Roark vs. Francisco

Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:55:29 -0700

Subject: Roark vs. Francisco

(This interpretation is based upon recollection from the novels. Both characters are complex and multifaceted, so I'm open to people pointing to specific events or evidence in the novel which make it clear if I've

overlooked something major.)

Howard Roark and Francisco d'Anconia are very different personality types and they tend to approach the world differently in some major ways. The later creation of the final novel, Francisco, is polished, urbane,

sophisticated. He is experienced and at ease around people of many different types and levels. Roark tends to be self-sufficient, self-contained, a loner, does not need people, does not care what people think, does not even

give a second's thought to an adversary such as Toohey, is sometimes baffled by people (the principle behind the Dean). He's laconic, a man of few words with people. He doesn't feel a great need to communicate, elaborate, explain in any way. His social needs and genuine friends are few to non-existent (at least through most of the book till he meets Wynand relatively late) and he's perfectly happy to go off and live in silent isolation for years at a time.

Francisco comes across, on balance and over a lifespan, as more sensitive to people, their natures, needs, psychologies. He was raised around them and deals with them smoothly and elegantly, even the ones he has little respect for. He projects a degree of enjoyment in and zest for conversation and interaction and debate. This would not be true for Howard Roark. One would have the sense that he would feel it takes vital time away from his work. Francisco had good friends early on, from childhood first in Dagny and Eddie, and later in college with Galt and Ragnar. And he develops a friendship that lasts and is successful by the end of the book with Rearden (as opposed to Roark's friendship with Wynand, which ends in a tragic way.)

In stylizing Roark in order to emphasize the importance of independence, first-handedness, productive work, and a driving central purpose, Ayn Rand created a character for whom people were not merely secondary in a minor way but secondary in a major way...to the extent of being largely excluded and dismissed. But in Francisco, she created a character in whom a wide range of many personality and character traits are more balanced. No one virtue is stressed.

A poll was taken among Objectivists recently in which the preference for Roark or Francisco among Rand's heroes was fairly evenly split.

Roark is a superb role model for teenagers hungry to define themselves as separate, autonomous, first-hand beings and for others later in life who still need to see an image of rejection of second-handedness, of proud and confident and serene independence. Roark helps many people break free in their own lives. From religion, from tradition, from dependence. And they can't help but love him for this and view him and "The Fountainhead" as a major shaft of sunlight which fell into their lives.

But I think, after the breaking free is reached, in the long years that follow in one's life, one needs to take the next step.

Hold Francisco as your next role model. Erected on the firm and unquestioned foundation of one's own independence, once first-handedness has been achieved and is solidly centered, one must next move forward and grasp the importance of people, of society and community and gregariousness on the one end and intimacy and openness on the other, of emotional and psychological sensitivity and empathy.

A good example of this last is after Dagny has had a very bad day dealing with looters and expropriators and is quite alone and alienated, Francisco, who knows what has just transpired and grasps what impact it would have on her, is in the lobby of her building waiting for her. He was sensitive enough to know she'd need emotional support. And he's there to provide it.

It's my sense and recollection from the novels (I hope to write or speak on this further . . . and would be interested in any supporting or contrary evidence) that Francisco is a much more well-rounded character than Roark. He has a better balance of virtues and of personality traits.

[in part, the displaying of this aspect of Francisco may be due to the fact that he is given equals to interact with from the very beginning of the novel--in the long flashback to his two friends from a happy childhood--onward through the entire book. One doesn't sense in Roark a happy childhood and close childhood friends or even close playmates. While Roark does show sensitivity toward Mallory, Keating, Wynand... I'd have to

reread the book to see what gave me this idea and if it's accurate, it's a subtle point, but I recall it as coming across a bit more as patience or tolerance toward an inferior in the case of Keating or someone with less

strength in the other two cases, whereas Francisco projects toward Rearden and Dagny the respect and empathy of dealing with his full equals with no trace of condescension or a hand extended downward at any moment.]

And so, for all these reasons, Francisco d'Anconia is Ayn Rand's most admirable and fully developed male hero.

(Galt is not sketched out in as great a detail in the novel-he's less concrete and more abstract. Dagny would require a separate discussion -- she's important and a good role model in a number of ways, but I'm only

trying to deal with the men in this mini-essay).

In a sense, Francisco is more fully integrated than Roark in terms of being in sync with reality...all of reality, including the aspects of society, community, friendship, and range of emotions and attitudes.

And, if you're going to try to be like one of the two heroes in a full sense, to put his picture up on your mental wall, he's the one that people should normally select as role model --- in the most fully developed, adult,

well-rounded sense.

--Philip Coates

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: The Hostage Principle -- Short Form

Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 00:48:43 -0700

Subject: The Hostage Principle -- Short Form

Because I'm job hunting I don't have time now for long time-consuming posts to this list, but this philosophical principle is _extremely_ important right now . . . and is in fact a life and death issue in terms of the war on terrorism and whether we are going to win it:

I've been corresponding with a libertarian leader who takes the position of what seems to be the overwhelming majority of the leadership of the libertarian movement who have joined forces with the far left on this issue

( a position which is so anti-life and anti-commonsense that it threatens to marginalize the libertarian movement, to undo the progress they have made in the last twenty years, and make to them a laughing stock in the country).

This position is applied to any innocent civilians who are killed by the U.S. in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. It is also applied to the Israelis when they invade the West Bank, trying to root out terrorists. It

was applied decades ago to Hiroshima (whose purpose was to shorten that war . . and ultimately to save lives):

>How can the killings of non-combatants by the US government, intentional or not -- possibly be legally or morally allowed?

I first ran across this argument stated by Murray Rothbard when I sat in on a class he gave in NYC.

He stated that if the Soviet Union were to launch a nuclear attack on the United States and kill millions of people, the U.S. would be morally wrong to retaliate with a second strike because it would kill more millions of people in the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of whom were innocent.

I was aghast and horrified that this influential libertarian was spouting such a grotesquely false and twisted (and suicidal) version of the non-initiation of force principle.

I pointed out the following to him in a letter I titled "The Hostage Principle" (I gave a copy to Dr. Peikoff and Harry Binswanger...and a couple years later I heard some people in Oist circles referring to the hostage

principle...but I wasn't given credit for it or its title, if I recall):

<This is a very short, terse, essentialized form of the argument...I don't deal in this post with the whole set of 'fog of war' issues or apply it to a wide range of circumstances and varying contexts...nor do I deal with cases

in which an alternative solution to 'collateral damage' is possible.>

1. Suppose a robber walks into a bank and grabs the first person standing by the door as a human shield. Holds him in front of this body and starts shooting at the guard, trying to kill him. Only way guard can survive is to

shoot thru the hostage.

2. Result: Self-defense in some cases (this one) requires that you kill an innocent non-combatant.

3. Conclusion: U.S. law (properly) places full moral blame for the deaths on the person who placed the innocents in the position of shields or hostage.

4. In a certain metaphysical sense, the aggressor is the _cause_ of the deaths of the innocents, of civilians, of non-combatants and of any collateral damage which is unavoidable in the process of self-defense.

5. Application: Now apply this on a larger scale. Apply this to war in which the civilian population (of both countries) are used as hostages or shields by the aggressor.

6. Alternative: If you can't defend yourself if innocents or non-combatants die in the process, you must become a pacifist -- it becomes immoral to defend yourself against a sufficiently ruthless aggressor.

No defender could ever win a war or discourage aggression this way. The aggressor would merely insure that the body count of innocents would be high and would win immediately.

--Philip Coates

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: the alleged anarchocapitalist 'scholars'--is that all there is?

Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 19:45:24 -0800

Subject: the alleged anarchocapitalist 'scholars'--is that all there is?

The two individuals who Tim claims [March 20] have refuted the argument for proper procedures and the need for a limited constitutional government do no such thing or anything even close:

1. Tim refers to the George Smith essay, "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Society", with awe and reference as 'necessary homework' for even participating in this debate. [and James Donald posts an excerpt from it on

March 21--so apparently it's frequently seen as pivotal].

I have just wasted my time reading it.

George makes a number of good points known to those of us already familiar with the history of common law. But with regard to -this- debate, all he does in excessively wordy academic writing style (other than use irrelevant language and drag in Mises and big words such as 'catallactics' or positive words such as 'entrepreneurial' which are not relevant to the central point and go off on other tangents such as the ambiguity of language not relevant to the issue) is to claim that deceit and unreliability by private or governmental 'justice agencies' would be minimized by the "need to minimize potential conflict with a third party who might intervene."

He claims it. He doesn't prove it.

Nor does he explain which Third Parties are so eager to intervene and risk getting shot or sued that worrying about what they might do would be any deterrent to a criminal or lazy or irresponsible person: George believes

that if you use force without due process or proof at least in the eyes of bystanders or third parties, you run the risk [not even the certainty] "they" will intervene against you. So your incentive is to do what a proper process would require...justice agency must then provide 'public verification of a knowledge claim.'

But this is completely floating because it depends on the who, what, why, when, where, and how. The main concrete example Smith provides in this essay are Robinson Crusoe, his man Friday who may have stolen his coconuts, and some fantastic Third Party who is not even concretized at all (who is he, what are his incentives, is he a monkey or a mysterious third resident of the island?)

Notice that he doesn't tackle a detailed example from today's complex urban civilization.

At the end, not having dealt with *any* of the many serious objections to anarcho-capitalism, and only having dealt with one tiny aspect of the debate, not having dealt at all with the mafia issue, or the use of force or intimidation and killing against competing agencies in the absence of government to prevent it, or the issue of trying to hide evidence, or people trying to 'game the system', or the stolen concept point that you have to have law and order before a market for defense and justice can exist... or any of the DOZENS of holes Objectivists have poked in anarcho-capitalism over the years...he complacently makes the following vastly inflated claim:

"I have tried to show that there are no serious gaps in the libertarian paradigm of natural law and noncoercion such that a monopolistic government must step forward to fill these gaps."

THIS is the unanswerable refutation of limited government or the proof of the practicality of competing police forces or law courts??

2. Tim summarizes R.A. Childs' "thoroughly demolish[ing]" of what is supposed to be an argument similar to ones I posted on March 12 on the need for objective processes of justice and what is wrong with individuals (or their agencies) taking the law into their own hands and making it subject to economics.

I am shocked that Child's would think that his mere assertion (unless Tim has left out an actual argument) that "competitors may use the exact same procedures" is anything more than an arbitrary claim.

It is tedious to have to point out that neither Childs as summarized nor Smith deal with the following commonsense observation of reality:

"The individual's processes are *severely limited* compared to that of a basically just and fair government. They are limited in terms of lack of sufficient distance from and objectivity toward matters concerning oneself

(same for your agents--you tend to hire the ones who will do your bidding or who see abortion or eating animals as criminal if that is your philosophy), in terms of resources, time, money, ability to gather evidence, etc." [Philip Coates, March 12]

I packed a lot into that.

If you think it's wrong, again you have to deal with -me- and to unpack and deal with -each- of my points or aspects of the problem, not claim that somebody some decades ago was refuted by someone else. Then when I or someone else goes back and finds the answer lacking or missing, don't say "well, you need to also read X."

Bring it on. Bring it -here-. And bring something better than Childs and Smith as cited above. Both of them are good polemical writers, book reviewers, good summarizers of free-market economic principles, strong

advocates of freedom, etc. But philosophy of law is more complex. It requires very careful thinking and holding a huge context and many different kinds of cases and they seem to be out of their depth in it.

Just for the record:

The anarchocapitalists from the late sixties on have not suffered from lack of words. They have filled pages and pages and books and books with their arguments. If quantity were quality, they would have won the argument hands down.

But (so far)every time someone tells me, Phil, you need to do your homework and read this one last thing and here is the definitive, unanswerable, gilt-edged, rock solid, gen-u-ine *proof* that competing governments would work and limited government would devolve into tyranny, and I am sucked in and invest even more time, it is always incredibly sloppy and there are logical or evidentiary holes big enough to drive a tractor-trailer through.

--Philip Coates

P.S., Also, if you want to make the claim that checks and balances don't work and never have, you can't just drag in more names and claim that Lysander Spooner has 'proven it'. Especially when it is a claim so sweeping, unqualified, and counter-intuitive to those of us who teach American history.

P.P.S., Tim says if this were a discussion in the hard sciences one would have to go and do a literature search. It isn't. There is no 'peer review' preventing arrant nonsense from being published in the Journal or Libertarian Studies. There is a tremendous amount of permissiveness and sloppiness in what gets published. You have to bring the arguments here. Or else we will suspect they are as unsupported as the ones above: Am I entitled to say Rand proved government is necessary, go do your homework and take the following Peikoff course and six essays...and, until you tell me you have done that, I don't have to be able to take the time to present her

argument myself in the pages of OWL?

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Subject: The Anarchist Attack on America

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 19:24:46 -0800

Subject: The Anarchist Attack on America

I'll be referring to those parts of Tim's post [March 23] which I think relate to this subject. I don't think Tim makes all of the mistakes I am going to criticize in the main body of this post. I am merely using his post as a springboard to criticize something in libertarian circles which has disturbed me for a very long time.

>The exact same "severely limited" individuals whose limitations allegedly doom anarchy to failure are the ones who would serve as the voters, candidates, elected officials, jurors, prosecutors, judges, etc., under

minarchy.

But that's exactly why you have a -process- to rein them in.

Part of which is checks and balances.

>[There are] myriad ways in which the U.S. government has not been restrained from violating its Constitution by [Phil's] vaunted "checks and balances."

A major theme of the article after article, book after book written by anarchist libertarians since the seventies, has often been:

(i) a concerted refusal to acknowledge areas where America is free (and free in part because of things like proper process and the rule of law),

(ii) a lack of proportion or overstated and hyperbolic attack on America for every conceivable violation of freedom in every instance.

[Rothbard, who believed the U.S. was in fact a "great Satan" and no better than the Soviet Union, was probably the fountainhead of this. He hammered away at it, as if repetition would make it more true.]

This theme (borrowed or imitated from the Left, whose professors were the in classroom educators of so many young libertarians) represents a truly massive failure of objectivity and a massive failure to understand history

on a very basic and fundamental level.

And it is doubtless one reason the libertarian movement (and the work of some but not all of its intellectuals) has been marginalized and not taken seriously. It comes across as lacking scholarly objectivity.

To demonstrate the following in depth would require going step by step through a comparison of America (even today) with all the previous civilizations that have existed. I couldn't do it in short posts and will

merely identify some of the key conclusions you will reach if you study history carefully enough, and which most really good professional historians would agree with:

1. America --even to this day-- is a freer society than virtually anything before it. More so than Rome or Greece, the monarchical and aristocratic and feudal Europe from which it sprung, the ancient world, the world of the Dark Ages, the tribal and religious societies throughout most of history, the totalitarian and authoritarian societies of the 20th century, etc.

2. The areas in which almost all readers of this list have their freedom infringed on do not include such massive interventions that prevent most of them from expressing their opinions, choosing productive careers, keeping the bulk of their money, selecting where they will live or who they will associate with or what books they will read.

3. In many areas, freedom has *increased* throughout American history since elitist, aristocratic, puritanical, religiously restricted, pre-constitutional colonial America) ... the destruction of slavery, the achieving of rights for women, the dismantling of segregation in the South, the elimination of press censorship from Zenger on, the early achievement of complete religious freedom by Jefferson and others which had never existed anywhere on earth, the elimination of many medieval restrictions on trade and contracts and corporations and labor freedom from guilds.

And dozens of other forms of economic and personal and civil and social freedom.

4. It is the *absence or undercutting* of limited constitutional government government (checks and balances is one aspect) or the ignoring of what is already in the constitution which accounts for freedoms never having existed elsewhere (or being circumscribed here).

5. As even a limited, FFLC (far-from-libertarian-constitutionalism) has spread to other parts of the world since the 1970s, it has resulted in *greater* freedom than had previously existed: protection of rights, the expanding of the sphere of protection of property, civil liberties, freedom of expression....and the toppling of both right and left dictatorships.

It spread from Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal and the generals' Greece to Marcos' Philippines to the toppling of the Latin American juntas. And to the fall of communism. And apartheid in South Africa.

> As David Friedman put it, it took only about 150 years for us to go from establishing a government of allegedly limited powers to one whose Supreme Court upheld a law making it illegal to grow corn on your own farm to feed your own hogs, on the grounds that it came within the scope of the Federal government's authority to regulate interstate commerce.

In assessing the balance between freedom and controls, between rights and regulation in America today, I have often found libertarian intellectuals and scholars (especially if they are anarchists and thus alienated

from -anything- government does) tending to use apocalyptic or overstated language. Dropping the qualifications of how sweeping the regulation is or how wide its applicability. This seems to be an example as recent as yesterday's postings:

Farmers, like businessmen, labor under many regulations but they are basically free to choose what they will raise and grow (within certain limits such as harassing but not crippling or bankrupting environmental and

safety laws and annoying taxation). What they produce is determined (again, largely or broadly speaking) by the world market. Again, something that was not true in previous civilizations and is not true in many parts of the world today. That is why American agriculture is the most productive in the world.

My final advice and summary to alienated libertarian anarchist intellectuals:

Don't be so embittered and outraged at the world you live in that you lose a sense of perspective and proportion.

Do not be so eager to criticize the bad things in America (or its distance from full freedom) that you fail to see the good things in America (or its distance from the other civilizations that have existed).

Ayn Rand once said people should get down on their knees and give thanks to the dirtiest, sootiest smokestack they could find.

And I tell all advocates of full freedom:

Get down on your knees and give thanks to the Constitution of the United States of America.

For all its erosions and imperfections, without it you would be not merely someone whose rights are infringed in some areas or on the periphery.

You would be a slave.

--Philip Coates

[ P.S., I'll leave aside any further response to James Donald [March 23], who seems to confuse -incivility- (name-calling, questioning someone's character, questioning honesty, or impugning motives) with severe and strong criticism of a person's -intellectual methods-, logic, scholarship, rationalistic thinking, failure to stay on subject, failure to deliver on what he claims to prove......none of which can be out of bounds, because thinking errors, errors of method are even more vital to debate and correct as errors of content. ]

From: Neil Goodell <ngoodell@zianet.com>

To: objectivism@wetheliving.com

Subject: OWL: Re: Grounding The Death Penalty: Exercise in Concretizing

Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 16:40:48 -0600

Follow-up to: Grounding The Death Penalty

Or: An Exercise in Concretizing

I will split my response to my proposed thought experiment into two posts. The present post concerns the nature of the exercise itself, and why I structured it the way I did. I have little or nothing to say regarding the death penalty per se in this essay, I will reserve that for a separate post.

Contrary to what Jackie Goreham wrote on 6/21:

>As for who maintains the prisons, it makes sense for the state to do this in their role as arbiters of force. As for your island community, I am not sure why we would use a fictional example to debate this issue. I am always in favor of using reality to make decision since it is reality that we must deal with.

There is nothing fictional about the thought experiment I proposed. The purpose of a thought experiment is to enable focus on the relevant points so as to promote clearer thinking. By eliminating irrelevant (but not necessarily unimportant) matters from the discussion, it is easier to concretize specific issues thus making insight and understanding easier to achieve.

Some years ago as I was riding the train home from school at 11pm one night, I had a "discussion" with a classmate about welfare. It took about an hour, but I finally got him into a corner from which there was no reasonable -- for him -- solution.

That night I learned that the trick to concretization in all public policy arguments was actually very simple: make it personal, between them and the "policy," between their family and the beneficiary of the policy. Always make the person arguing in favor of one of these positions the one that has to pay for it, and the one who must make the decisions. And put them in a reasonable, but extreme, situation, one in which they or their family must themselves sacrifice in order to fulfill the demands of the policy: the dollars have to come out of their pocket, the food off of their table, their child who cannot see the doctor that day, their child who must give his or her bicycle to someone else, they who must give up their car, and so on.

Get rid of the middleman of government.

My success with this method is 100% as best as I recall. I rarely get people to actually change their minds in the midst of our "discussion" but the argument almost always comes to a quick conclusion. The most frequent counter tactic is to attempt to introduce some type of insulating layer, be it government, other people, anything to take the focus and responsibility off of them directly, to somehow dilute it and spread it around. When it is "just them" on one end of the equation, they often argue that it is somehow not realistic....

In the scenario I set up, the only government on the island is its inhabitants. In principle, government is only a proxy for actions the individual members believe are morally proper -- it has their implicit sanction for everything it does. Situating the thought experiment on an island eliminates the proxy -- the middleman -- so it is the community members directly who must enforce their principles.

The effect of a middleman in these "public policy" arguments is that it enables someone to escape responsibility from standing up for the principles they espouse. They can proclaim that welfare and food stamps are right and proper, yet not have to pay--directly--the cost of enforcing the underlying

principle. In simpler terms, they get to eat their cake, and pay a "heavy" to take someone else's cake so they can have one too.

To the case at hand: When Jackie says "it makes sense for the state to do this [maintain the prisons]," she is introducing a middleman.

The question Jackie, and others, need to ask is this: Are you willing to "pay" for the principles you claim to stand for, when it is *you* who must carry out the enforcement?

Quite frankly, I have been astonished at how quickly friends and colleagues go quiet when forced to confront this alternative. I have come to the conclusion that the majority of people, when making decisions about non-simple issues, reason from one abstraction to another. They start with a declaration and then construct arguments to support that view.

For example, most people hold the view that cruelty is wrong. And the concept of death is often frightening to people because, at some level, they are forced to confront their own mortality whenever the topic of death comes up. Then they hear the oft-repeated refrain that execution is a "cruel and unusual" form of punishment. So it becomes easy for this person to associate cruelty with mortality (their own), and by extension, fear. From here it is a very small step to arrive at the conclusion that execution is wrong.

Of course these are just floating abstractions unconnected to anything concrete. But consider the implications:

Returning to the island community example of the man who raped a young girl and murdered her mother in the process. If we accept the premise that execution is wrong, the victims' husband and father will be required to build this man a boat so he can be put off the island. Before the husband/father can do this though, he must first build a prison of some sort, or otherwise devise a means to keep the murderer restrained. All the while this grieving man must still tend to his own garden crops, animals, and so on, so that he will have food to eat for himself, and also for his wife's murderer. (I could continue with more examples but I think I've made my point.)

The interesting question here is this: Who is the one in control of this situation? Not the husband. It is the murderer who is dictating what actions the husband is permitted to take. And it is the husband's own "virtues" that are giving the murderer this power.

Who is being punished here? Who is the one wearing the chain?

Which is more cruel, to execute a murderer, or to force an innocent victim to provide for the well-being of the man who murdered his wife and raped his daughter?

If your answer is that execution is more cruel, then in my opinion you are a monster.

Not only is the victim giving an implicit moral sanction to the man who raped his daughter, the father is putting food on the rapist's table.

And what if, because of his grief, the husband/father is not able to provide adequately for the murderer, and dies as a prisoner, does this make the husband/father guilty of murder?

-----

As you can see, the moral quandary becomes very muddy quite quickly. All because the victim gave his moral sanction to the evil-doer. The father may have been outraged and grief stricken, but so long as he endorses a policy in which wrong-doers are not punished in accordance with the severity of their crimes, then the moral quicksand he has created in his mind will eventually kill him. If not physically then at least emotionally and morally.

-----

This is a quick and dirty example of how to concretize a moral abstraction. The trick is to create a situation in which the theoretical actions are brought into physical terms in such a way so that your own life is *directly*

affected by every action and decision. And not just the immediate actions and decisions, but also the logically plausible consequent actions and effects.

I think you will find it quite amazing how quickly complicated issues such as welfare, war, public versus private property, and so on, clarify themselves. It is easy to get tangled up with abstractions and concepts and principles yet forget that these are creations of our mind and have no existential reality. Yet reality is where our bodies live, and unlike the world of our mind, entities in existence have an identity and are subject to an unforgiving cause and effect. We can "bend" causality in our mind, not so in the real world. There are no do-overs in life (do-again-later, sometimes, but not do-overs).

Food for thought...

--Neil Goodell

From: Neil Goodell <ngoodell@zianet.com>

To: objectivism@wetheliving.com

Subject: OWL: Re: Grounding The Death Penalty: Exercise in Concretizing]

Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:56:25 -0600

[Author's note: Mike Rael sent me a copy of his note before it was distributed on OWL (on 7/12). At the time I thought it was a private note and I replied to him privately (i.e., offlist). I didn't know he had also sent it to the OWL list. Following is the letter I wrote and sent to Mike in response. --Neil]

11 July 2001

Hi Mike,

The middleman has nothing to do with the death penalty. In my posts on this subject so far I've said almost nothing about the death penalty per se.

The death penalty is merely a convenient vehicle I'm using to demonstrate one method of achieving clearer thinking. I've submitted another post to OWL, which the moderator will distribute shortly I hope, using a wholly different subject matter, analyzing a recent episode of the television show "Boston Public" in which a fired teacher is suing to get his job back.

My purpose with these two posts is to show how reasoning from abstraction to abstraction can disconnect us from reality. It is easy to forget that at every step in our thought processes we must always reconnect our concepts to actions and entities in the real world, else they start to float. Abstractions are middlemen in our thinking. They serve a purpose, but that purpose is limited, and only by eliminating them can we ground and thus verify our thinking.

Referring to your example, would your reluctance to slaughter a cow permit you to allow your family to starve if the cow was the only thing they had to eat? People who own farm animals spend a lot of time shoveling manure. This is not a job I would particularly want, but that does make the job "bad" or "immoral." Rather it reminds me to be grateful that we live in a division of labor society!

As to your second question, I don't recall a single instance when I've gotten a person to change their mind about a non-trivial issue during my "argument" with them. (Two exceptions to this: those who had no prior opinion, and those whose opinion reflects the last person they spoke with.) Changing one's own thinking about a subject takes time, to reflect on the arguments themselves, and to integrate those arguments with the rest of our thinking. For most of us, this is not a sit-down-and-reflect-for-five-minutes process, it occurs gradually over a period of days and weeks.

I'm also not in the habit of pressuring people to take a particular intellectual line. This puts me in the position of patronizing them in that I am claiming to be superior to them, that my thinking is better than theirs. And if they adopt my thinking because of pressure I have applied, then anything that goes wrong in their life because of it is my responsibility, my fault if you will. Rightly or wrongly, they will hold me to blame.

I learned this lesson in my teens, and since then I have been very careful to insure that my "opponent" knows there is no pressure for them to adopt my opinion. I've also observed that this drives some people nutty; they've made it clear to me they *want* to be pressured (told what to think, if you will) yet I never go that extra step and they get confused. This is all contextual of course. I will argue much more forcefully with a friend whose thinking I know than with a college student or stranger.

There are a couple of exceptions to this, such as in a work setting when I am trying to sell "my" plan or idea. The governing principle is, does my pressuring diminish the other person's intellectual independence? When I

suspect the answer to this question is yes, then I back off. When I am successful at changing a person's mind, I want it to be because they genuinely agree with me, not because they are afraid of me. With the former I earn

respect, and possibly a new friend, with the latter I achieve only what Roark despised, living secondhandedly.

Thanks for writing,

--Neil

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Levels of Understanding

Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 14:37:38 -0700

Subject: Levels of Understanding

>what I first thought Rand was saying wasn't quite what Rand was actually saying. (Even Phil has made this point when he has mentioned that someone can't really understand O'ism until they've studied/lived it for years.) [Allen, 10/3]

That would be a rather imprecise formulation. Hopefully I didn't put it in those words independent of context, but if I did, let me clarify:

There are several levels of understanding Rand.

You can read a key concept in her political philosophy in an essay such as "Man's Rights". And it is not a difficult essay. It is possible for a reader to relatively quickly understand that she has a very distinctive and very precise concept of rights. That it is along the lines of the classic concept of 'negative rights' (freedom from interference) rather than 'positive rights' (a right to some good, such as a right to a job. A careful reader

will also understand, since she spells it out, that when she discusses a right to freedom of expression, or property, or 'the right to life', she does _not_ mean that this right is 'balanced' by the kind of other everyday

competing considerations, ('stakeholder rights', 'the public interest') that one often sees in decisions of the Supreme Court today.

So this aspect of Rand and of Objectivism can be _completely_ understood just from one essay.

But there may be other issues involving rights, such as issues of validation or answering objections or integration with other issues. Or application: how do they apply in many specific contexts: Should patent rights have a time limit? What happens to rights in emergency situations (lifeboat situations and wars)? What about quarantine and subpoena?

So that's a second level of understanding Objectivism. It often comes later in time and builds on the first. It doesn't mean that the first level was not well understood.

And there are other levels.

Often involving the expansion of one's knowledge and breadth of integration.

It's a different level and a separate and later effort to integrate the concept of 'rights' with the anarchist idea (fallacy, actually) that one has a 'right' to delegate self-defense or retaliation to whoever one chooses based on whatever level of investigation one makes as to whether they intend to be scrupulous or not. To spot the fallacies requires a higher level of integration of rights, an integration with several other issues.

Plus, there are other areas of Objectivism which are more difficult than rights theory, requiring a different level of understanding (sometimes more abstract or with a more methodological focus). For the average person, the whole field of epistemology would qualify. For example, reading Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology for the first time is much less likely to be a bored "yeah, yeah, I already got that" kind of experience in the way that reading "Man's Rights" might be for those already exposed to the classical

liberal tradition or to the ideas of the founding fathers.

In that sense, whether or not you "get" some aspect of Objectivism quickly or slowly may depend on your own context...how much or how little you have been exposed to similar ideas (or methods of thinking) in the past.

In the case of ITOE, the chances are you've never seen anything remotely like this before or on this level

If you're a good introspector, you know that you are going to have to come back and carefully reread this several times over a period of years because, as Allen mentions, you sense on some level that you may find what you "thought Rand was saying wasn't quite what Rand was actually saying".

One level that ITOE forces you to reach if you are to fully understand it (Rand may have forced this on you before, or you may have achieved it earlier in life) is tremendous precision in language. She uses words and

phrases such as nominalism, realism, intrinsicism, implicit knowledge . . . and many others in almost mathematically precise ways.

(In regard to the difficulty of grasping epistemology, I'm reminded of a bizarre, rationalistic, uncomprehending, enormously destructive piece written by Bryan Register in JARS [vol 1, no. 2]. As one more piece of evidence of the mistakes of 'highly academic thinkers', this is a student of Objectivism who is a graduate student in philosophy at a prestigious school and has attended many Objectivist conferences. But he just can't shake out of his head the idea that Rand is advocating "nominalism" in ITOE. Which is exactly

one of the two major errors she is refuting. He didn't seem to have the humility to do the careful rereading several times until it sunk in what she was getting at. As one would expect, he also butchers the concepts 'realism' and 'intrinsicism'...apparently employing the usages of the analytic tradition in regard to these and attributing to her a set of views which she does not take anywhere. And then vigorously beating to death the straw philosophical thinker he has manufactured --- thereby causing enormous damage to the plausibility of Objectivism in the minds of any outsiders who would happen to read the piece and think that it represents careful thinking about Objectivism by knowledgeable insiders.)

The most advanced or difficult level of all is to integrate Objectivism fully into living life. There are more people still struggling with this than there are who think Rand is advocating nominalism in regard to

universals or are unclear what she means by a moral law.

To summarize:

One level of understanding is to grasp the basic position or idea or definition or theory and the often unique way she uses words.

Another level is to integrate it with other views one has or hears on the same topic.

Another level is to apply the position to complex or borderline cases.

Another level is methodological: adopting Rand's precise and careful way of thinking about philosophical (not polemical) issues - and integrating them properly with other methodological tools from one's own discipline or

experience. Another level is to take all this stuff and integrate it with all the details and complexity of living one's life. (Note: I'm not suggesting these levels divide up neatly in practice or come in this tidy a chronological sequence.)

--Philip Coates

[Aside: The reason I entitled the post 'Levels of Understanding' rather than 'Levels of Understanding Objectivism' is because the principles I discuss apply to grasping any sufficiently sizable or extensive body of knowledge, academic discipline, methodology, or profession.]

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Subject: Defending the Language

Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:48:14 -0700

Subject: Defending the Language

One of the biggest mistakes young academics (this would be true of older established and influential full professors as well) often make in philosophy, psychology, and elsewhere in the humanities is they fail to

defend in their own minds the context, the richness, the multiple meanings, the derivation, and the conceptual effectiveness of the English language as it has developed into a more and more powerful and supple tool across the centuries.

They seem too easily persuaded that there are puzzles or problems or improper implications in the usage of words such as "he", "man", and "referent". They are persuaded by journal articles more than by a full

exposure to how people on the street, historical writers, magazine articles use words. Since they have often gone directly from high school to college to grad school, they (some or many of them) have never acquired enough depth of reading to be resistant to the ideas that "man" only applies to one gender. Or that "referent" only refers to a physical thing. [Paul Bryant, 8/21, claims this usage is insisted on by both analytic and continental philosophers].

Those of us who did not pursue graduate study in linguistics but instead have read widely in Shakespeare and Browning, or Aristotle and Plato, or Gibbon and Herodotus, or Orwell and Strunk and White . . . or simply just

read the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly. . . have a much clearer idea through actual practice (the gold standard here) of how, for example, "man" and "referent" are used.

In this post, I'd rather not defend (again) point-by-point the sense in which "man" is understood quite clearly by those who are widely read and have a thorough liberal education to refer to both genders and to the species as such. Nor do I want to go off on a tangent to hammer home the general knowledge fact that one usage in the English language of a 'referent' is 'that to which something refers' and the 'that' can be much more than a physical object.

There's a deeper and far more important point here.

When you fail to integrate and defend the language you grew up with and everyone around you grew up with...and instead try to substitute for what already works some new, invented terms (such as some gender neutral construct for 'man', or 'signification' for 'referent') you are causing crippling and sometimes irreversible harm to your own thinking processes . . . as well as those of everyone who adopts the new terminology or insists that it be used in academic discourse or to be published in a journal.

The new term does not have the richness of history or association.

It does not have the metaphors, the poetry, the immediate mental connection with things you learned in childhood or high school history or English literature or ancient myth or great essays by Mark Twain or E.B. White or George Orwell.

Even worse when you discard a well-worn term one of whose sub-meanings or senses of connotations already serves the exact purpose you want, you or others will always constantly have a disconnect, a mental struggle going on:

People will misuse both the old term (whose meaning you have tried to alter or restrict) and the new one. If philosophers create technical terms such as 'intension/extension' either to exactly indicate connotation / denotation' (or even a subtle shift or distinction involving these), they are creating a special jargon which is unnecessary if terms already exist in the language that do that work.

Maybe for elitist reasons the originators didn't want to use terms which every English junior high school teacher can understand and teach her class (connotation and denotation). But what they have accomplished is to muddy the waters. Every time someone reads it they may have to wrench themselves mentally away from, for example, the ordinary meaning of the word 'intention' [purpose or intent]...they will have to try to automatize a new technical jargon. And they will have to also hold in mind the (old-fashioned) terms connotation and denotation.

Also, there is a whole thousand year history of discussions of denotation and connotation or their root ideas in the English language or the Latin and other languages that preceded it and have fed into it from many sources. By switching terms, philosophers keep their discipline 'pure' in their journals. It can too easily be a false and Platonic purity. Integration with, for example, English literature and historical sources tends to be excluded in favor of another tradition...that of academic philosophy of much more recent vintage. The examples would tend to shift from historical and "public" ones widely known throughout the culture toward thought problems

and technical formulations that only the priesthood can understand. [i'm not even mentioning the possibility that the new terms may be found to have their own ambiguities and imprecisions, such as when philosophers attempt to substitute the fuzzier, made-up term 'signification' for the crystal clear, already commonly known term 'referent'.]

The claim is often made by academics in the humanities that, like scientists, they are in need of sharper tools and finer-grained instruments. The English language is sometimes ambiguous or imprecise. There is no good

word for what they need to be discussing.

But as Rand and many others of us have pointed out incessantly and academics don't seem to want to accept, philosophy and the humanities deal primarily with facts of reality about man and his everyday interactions with the world.

This is material accessible to any intelligent layman.

It is not like subatomic physics or the biochemistry of viruses.

There are two reasons why (with _extremely_ rare exceptions) it is generally unnecessary and inappropriate to invent special, technical terms (whose full context and usage can only be understood after years of mastering a

specialized professional literature)..and a third point which is their consequence:

i) The facts of reality and everyday situations and introspections involved have been experienced by virtually every thoughtful human being; they are quite well-known; they have been discussed by gardeners, stockbrokers, librarians, court jesters, lawyers, and physicians for centuries;

ii) Since this (accessibility and commonality of experience) is true, language has _already evolved_ to discuss nearly all of these 'humanistic' issues quite precisely and accurately;

iii) Your responsibility as a graduate student is to become aware of this huge past cultural context -- to master that language and that historical-literary-psychological background. You do not have the epistemological right to discard it all, say "don't bother me I want to be a philosopher not a historian", and just start afresh. That would be irresponsible and unscholarly on your part.

The English language as it has evolved over the centuries . . . through absorbing concepts from other languages and through a certain amount of creation of new specialized terms . . . already has long provided tremendous power to a skilled writer and to a deep thinker. It's hard to be certain but based on the academic writers I have read, the journal articles I have had recommended to me, what seems to be true is that academic writers are seldom good writers. Academic prose is well-known for being clumsy and unskilled, long-winded and obscure or obtuse. It seldom displays a good command of the English language in a supple, nuanced, literary, sophisticated, cultured level.

What (sometimes) seems to happen is the following:

a) The academics who invented or want to change terms did not do a thorough enough study of the language that is already out there. Sometimes the historical figures or current grad students came into philosophy from having been good at or devoted to science or math rather than literary or arts or history types ... so they came in _already_ not very language-sophisticated or relatively less developed in that sphere.

B) There _already exists_ a very good word, or phrase (or a combination of words which taken together conveys the meaning needed) But they were just not aware of it, or it was too difficult to formulate so they chose the "creative" satisfaction of inventing new language...which is also much easier and more fun than the long search to find just the right word or "public" formulation.

c) The new specialized jargon the academics create is readily accepted by journal editors because it is 'fresh' and 'original'...or is well-defined and presented in a seminal journal article.

d) The new language, new distinctions, long series of learned commentaries and critiques add new layers of clarification or adumbration to the special terms which all become part of the sizable body of knowledge new graduate students will be tested on/required to master.

e) New graduate students are epistemologically and linguistically vulnerable. They grew up in a century where they often did not acquire a good education. One where they often did not learn Latin (roots of words and

their structure), did not thoroughly enough learn the canon of dead white males (great writers who used language forcefully and well) and other 'cultural and civilizational' areas such as world civ and world history.

That would have been the proper preparation to become philosophers. The grounding needed before one enters graduate school. Without it, they are susceptible to absorbing uncritically what their professors tell them is

true about language and how it needs to be changed.

Here's the bottom line:

Language and words are the tools we use to think with.

The English language, rooted in other simpler and feeder languages, was developed over an enormously long period of time by tens of thousands of minds working in the planet-wide and millennia-deep laboratory of

experience.

It needs to be treated with tremendous respect and mastered over decades. It is a very, very, very good tool, just as it exists right now and in common usage. While not unflawed, it is the most powerful thinking tool in the universe (more words and concepts than any other language...absorbs terms from other languages to identify previously unnamed concepts or existents...developing into a world language used by many civilizations and specializations).

To change the language we have grown up with and used to clearly specify issues, situations, and subtleties is an _incredibly_ serious matter. And it seems to be done too cavalierly too often by unscholarly or too pedantic or too disrespectful academics.

Words represent concepts. To change words is often to change our very conceptual understanding of reality.

It can affect our very ability to think.

A good, diligent graduate student does not merely absorb uncritically the terminology and definitions of his professors, no matter how prestigious or brilliant.

He may have to use them in papers to get a degree. But he always does keeps a separate mental notebook in which he asks and answers questions such as:

Was this new term or distinction or series of journal articles parsing the term necessary? Does it add further clarity or further confusion? Does normal language already cover this issue and therefore should we throw out

the whole discussion? Is the debate (over for example the morning star/evening star issue) a semantic and linguistic one or a substantive one?

It's really important that, no matter how busy you are, you do all this extra work. (I certainly had to in college and graduate level courses in philosophy and I can't imagine someone not doing this and retaining mental

clarity.) I'm not sure from postings, conversations, and writings I've seen over the years from, for example, Oist grad students in philosophy that, for all their claims to scholarship, they have always been as diligent as is

necessary for cognitive self-defense.

Or critical enough of their own professors or their own mental/linguistic processes.

--Philip Coates

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Subject: Defending the Language

Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:48:14 -0700

Subject: Defending the Language

One of the biggest mistakes young academics (this would be true of older established and influential full professors as well) often make in philosophy, psychology, and elsewhere in the humanities is they fail to

defend in their own minds the context, the richness, the multiple meanings, the derivation, and the conceptual effectiveness of the English language as it has developed into a more and more powerful and supple tool across the centuries.

They seem too easily persuaded that there are puzzles or problems or improper implications in the usage of words such as "he", "man", and "referent". They are persuaded by journal articles more than by a full

exposure to how people on the street, historical writers, magazine articles use words. Since they have often gone directly from high school to college to grad school, they (some or many of them) have never acquired enough depth of reading to be resistant to the ideas that "man" only applies to one gender. Or that "referent" only refers to a physical thing. [Paul Bryant, 8/21, claims this usage is insisted on by both analytic and continental philosophers].

Those of us who did not pursue graduate study in linguistics but instead have read widely in Shakespeare and Browning, or Aristotle and Plato, or Gibbon and Herodotus, or Orwell and Strunk and White . . . or simply just

read the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly. . . have a much clearer idea through actual practice (the gold standard here) of how, for example, "man" and "referent" are used.

In this post, I'd rather not defend (again) point-by-point the sense in which "man" is understood quite clearly by those who are widely read and have a thorough liberal education to refer to both genders and to the species as such. Nor do I want to go off on a tangent to hammer home the general knowledge fact that one usage in the English language of a 'referent' is 'that to which something refers' and the 'that' can be much more than a physical object.

There's a deeper and far more important point here.

When you fail to integrate and defend the language you grew up with and everyone around you grew up with...and instead try to substitute for what already works some new, invented terms (such as some gender neutral construct for 'man', or 'signification' for 'referent') you are causing crippling and sometimes irreversible harm to your own thinking processes . . . as well as those of everyone who adopts the new terminology or insists that it be used in academic discourse or to be published in a journal.

The new term does not have the richness of history or association.

It does not have the metaphors, the poetry, the immediate mental connection with things you learned in childhood or high school history or English literature or ancient myth or great essays by Mark Twain or E.B. White or George Orwell.

Even worse when you discard a well-worn term one of whose sub-meanings or senses of connotations already serves the exact purpose you want, you or others will always constantly have a disconnect, a mental struggle going on:

People will misuse both the old term (whose meaning you have tried to alter or restrict) and the new one. If philosophers create technical terms such as 'intension/extension' either to exactly indicate connotation / denotation' (or even a subtle shift or distinction involving these), they are creating a special jargon which is unnecessary if terms already exist in the language that do that work.

Maybe for elitist reasons the originators didn't want to use terms which every English junior high school teacher can understand and teach her class (connotation and denotation). But what they have accomplished is to muddy the waters. Every time someone reads it they may have to wrench themselves mentally away from, for example, the ordinary meaning of the word 'intention' [purpose or intent]...they will have to try to automatize a new technical jargon. And they will have to also hold in mind the (old-fashioned) terms connotation and denotation.

Also, there is a whole thousand year history of discussions of denotation and connotation or their root ideas in the English language or the Latin and o

Peter · January 31, 2010

Adam,

I think your rant against Objectivist Scholar Philip Coates was unwarranted. His letter was respectful and pointed out a basic failing of many people, and not just you.

I dug into my archives and grabbed a sampling of letters Philip has written over the years. His output has been prodigious. I have around a hundred top notch letters from Philip. He is praised, not vilified by the people who responded to him, including some quite famous.

Are you blind? On a thread about no bullying, you are a bully. Your flaming was uncalled for. You owe him an apology.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

From: "Philip Coates" <philcoates@worldnet.att.net>

To: "owl" <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Roark vs. Francisco

Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:55:29 -0700

Subject: Roark vs. Francisco

(This interpretation is based upon recollection from the novels. Both characters are complex and multifaceted, so I'm open to people pointing to specific events or evidence in the novel which make it clear if I've overlooked something major.)

Howard Roark and Francisco d'Anconia are very different personality types and they tend to approach the world differently in some major ways. The later creation of the final novel, Francisco, is polished, urbane,sophisticated. He is experienced and at ease around people of many different types and levels. Roark tends to be self-sufficient, self-contained, a loner, does not need people, does not care what people think, does not even