Who were the participants in the ItOE Seminar?


kiaer.ts

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

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Jonathan,

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

Michael

Kat asked for the names of those present at the

Epistemology Workshops. Here's what I have.

Quoted participants:

A - Harry Binswanger

B - Allan Gotthelf

C - Nick Bykovetz

D - John O. (?) Nelson

E - Leonard Peikoff

F - George Walsh

G - Fred Weiss

H - Mike Berliner

I - Gary Lockman

J - John Allen

K - Al Jakira

L - Tony Plasil

M - Larry (Laurence) Gould

Also listed as auditors who aren't recorded

as having said anything in the edited volume:

Erich Veyhl

Robert Hartford

And as guests:

Allan Blumenthal

Joan Blumenthal

Erika Holzer

Henry Holzer

Frank O'Connor

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

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

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

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

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

Peikoff writes in the Introduction:

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

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

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

Ellen

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Jonathan,

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

Michael

Kat asked for the names of those present at the

Epistemology Workshops. Here's what I have.

Quoted participants:

A - Harry Binswanger

B - Allan Gotthelf

C - Nick Bykovetz

D - John O. (?) Nelson

E - Leonard Peikoff

F - George Walsh

G - Fred Weiss

H - Mike Berliner

I - Gary Lockman

J - John Allen

K - Al Jakira

L - Tony Plasil

M - Larry (Laurence) Gould

Also listed as auditors who aren't recorded

as having said anything in the edited volume:

Erich Veyhl

Robert Hartford

And as guests:

Allan Blumenthal

Joan Blumenthal

Erika Holzer

Henry Holzer

Frank O'Connor

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

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

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

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

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

Peikoff writes in the Introduction:

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

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

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

Ellen

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

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Two of the names in the list are misspelled:

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

Nick Bykovitz I think should be Bykovetz.

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

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

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

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

Ellen

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

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Thanks, Michael.

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

Ellen

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

A few of his works are these:

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

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

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

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

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

Ellen, is this man likely Professor D?

Perhaps he was visiting at Fordham.

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

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

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

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John sounds likelier than Ralph as a participant.

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

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

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

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

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

Link

Largely Forgotten Independent Film Director Ralph Nelson and His 1972 Cult Western "The Wrath of God"

November 22, 2007 by Stephen Murray 

[...]

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

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

Link

Objectivism and History in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead,

July 11, 2007 by Asna Ansari

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

Ellen

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Neil,

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

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

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

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

Michael

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

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

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

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

John O. (?) Nelson

Thanks in advance.

Ellen

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

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

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

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

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

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  • 1 month later...

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

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

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

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In the published transcription Rand says she hit on the theory "some twenty years ago," (i.e. 1950 or a bit earlier); in a paper at ARS / APA a couple of years ago Gotthelf said she hit on it in the late 40s. This does not prove that he was the one who asked, but it shows that he accepts her answer.

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[....]

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

See the post of mine linked in post #3 above.

I quote:

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

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

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

I haven't time now to ask my friend who saw the list at the archives for any recollection concerning the question about how she formed her theory of concepts. I'll be gone most of next week for back-to-back conferences, and will have to wait to inquire until after that.

I noticed something interesting in reading the material you linked. AR says:

AR: It’s a very interesting observation from another aspect, too. You know it’s been said many times that the human race follows in a general way the stages of development of an individual. And this would be an instance of that. [....]

The theory to which she alludes concerning stages of mental development of "the human race" came under severe criticism and I think has been entirely discarded by evolutionists and paleoanthropologists (if anyone still proposes it, I don't know who); it was analogous to Haeckel's "recapitulation" theory of embryology. The latter apparently still is taught in a certain number of curricula, but shouldn't be -- See.

Ellen

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  • 3 weeks later...
[....]

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

[...]

I haven't time now to ask my friend who saw the list at the archives for any recollection concerning the question about how she formed her theory of concepts. I'll be gone most of next week for back-to-back conferences, and will have to wait to inquire until after that.

I noticed something interesting in reading the material you linked. AR says:

AR: It's a very interesting observation from another aspect, too. You know it's been said many times that the human race follows in a general way the stages of development of an individual. And this would be an instance of that. [....]

The theory to which she alludes concerning stages of mental development of "the human race" came under severe criticism and I think has been entirely discarded by evolutionists and paleoanthropologists (if anyone still proposes it, I don't know who); it was analogous to Haeckel's "recapitulation" theory of embryology. The latter apparently still is taught in a certain number of curricula, but shouldn't be -- See.

Ellen

Thank you, Ellen, for responding to my query. I will wait for your return from conferences to ask your friend about her reminiscence, if any, of who had asked the last question in the appendix of ITOE.

As a small aside (for I wish to respect this thread's pointed focus), on the matter of Ayn Rand's usage of "human race" as possibly alluding to anything analogous to some "recapitulation" theory of embryology, I doubt that this is the case. I doubt that she had anything this dubious in mind. In any case, Prof. E started it. Nevertheless, this usage to me is more metaphorical rather than literal, for we can see the same kind of usage being applied to "mankind" in David Kelley's concluding paragraph in his latest article "The Fourth Revolution." (The New Individualist, Spring 2009) Like Rand, but in a new context, I too shudder to think of the time elements involved for this next revolution to reach the billions of individuals in the world.

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  • 2 months later...

Here is another source corroborating Ellen's list that Prof. B is indeed Allan Gotthelf. Stephen Boydstun writes:

[...]

Allan Gotthelf mentioned to me that he had an exchange with Rand in which she addressed the question of whether such phrases are concepts, that is, whether they designate a concept. Here is the exchange, from the Appendix to ITOE, page 177:

Gotthelf: I want to get clearer on the distinction between a concept and what you call a qualified instance of a concept [ITOE 23, 71]. How would you classify stationery supplies in that regard?

Rand: That is a qualified instance of a concept; it is used as if it were a concept, but it is a compound concept.

Gotthelf: What would turn it into a concept?

Rand: If we had a special word for it.

Gotthelf: Just as the phrase Conceptual Common Denominator became a concept by reducing it to CCD.

Rand: Yes, that’s right.

Gotthelf: If the phrase stationery supplies became, in effect, one unit—if you hyphenated it, so to speak, then it would become a concept?

Rand: That’s right.

[...]

That makes the answer definitive to my original query (Post #20) that it was Allan Gotthelf, not Harry Binswanger, who asked Ayn Rand how she came upon her theory of measurement-omission in the 1940s. (ITOE "Concluding Historical Postscript" 307)

Thanks, everyone.

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[....]

That makes the answer definitive to my original query (Post #20) that it was Allan Gotthelf, not Harry Binswanger, who asked Ayn Rand how she came upon her theory of measurement-omission in the 1940s. (ITOE "Concluding Historical Postscript" 307)

Thanks, everyone.

Thom,

There's a mix-up in your presuming that the Workshop was the first time AR was asked the question. It wasn't. Her explanation was known to Larry and me and others before the Workshop. Someone or ones had asked her prior to then. The question in the Workshop was pro forma to have her answer on tape.

I don't know if Harry had asked her earlier. Please don't take Gotthelf's being "Prof. B" as indicating that Harry was making up whatever story you heard attributed to him.

I never got around to asking my friend who saw the full transcripts if "Prof. B" was listed in those as the person querying. Sorry for a misunderstanding on my part: I'd thought you were just wondering if the "Prof. B" designation on that question was a typo.

Ellen

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Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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