Ellen Stuttle

Her views re chess might have been "silly," but they weren't "throwaway." She wrote a whole article on the subject. ;-) Barbara, what you describe about doing crossword puzzles as a way to keep your thoughts active but not interfered with by distracting emotional contexts while working on your writing well expresses the purpose for which I used to sometimes use solitaire. These days I mostly pace and "listen to" classical music, almost as background. I'm not really attending fully to the music, unless a particular performance or composition is played which captures me (I'll be listening to a radio station, and thus won't know in advance what's going to be played). In earlier years I had trouble ever having classical music playing without paying intense attention. But by this stage I've heard so much of the repertoire so many times, the enjoyed familiarity, plus the physical activity of pacing, helps with my thought processes. Interesting that Agathas were something you could read during those times. Poirot, as you probably recall, would build complex card houses while mulling out his thoughts. Agatha Christie is one of AR's tastes which I very much share, though I suspect primarily for different reasons. I was really good at solving a Christie. The second one I read was Ackroyd (sp?). I came close to getting that when the first "give-away" clue is dropped. I noticed the odd wording but didn't give it enough significance. Then about a page before the unveiling, I realized "of course." Afterward, I knew the technique of how to solve it with her work. (Only once did that fail, in a book written when she was getting older and was becoming "rambly." She didn't include her usual sort of clue(s) in that one.) The big fun for me, though, with Agatha, started on the second reading. That consisted of noticing all the details of her cameo-portrait characterizations. I used to quip in college that the person, not my professors, by whom I was being instructed in psychology was Agatha Christie. (Including her Mary Westmacott books, the direct focus of which is psychological. One, Absent in Spring, is a superb study of "de-repression.") Ellen ___

Michael quotes from the original Forward of Rand's series of articles "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" which began in The Objectivist (July 1966): That paragraph exactly is in the First Edition of the green-striped booklet in which ITOE was first published under one cover. Larry has a (liberally annotated with his marginal notes in tiny handwriting) copy of that first edition autographed as follows: To Larry Gould - - Cordially - Ayn Rand 11/11/69 Robert Campbell writes: See above: the credit is given in the 1967 printing just as it was worded in the original article. (The split was in late summer 1968; probably the credit was dropped by the Second Printing, if that appeared after the split.) Ellen PS: Great to see you here. I hope you'll have a little time for contributing, though I expect you're plenty busy.

Dragonfly, First, sorry that I didn't get back to you at all yesterday. You might have noticed from something I posted in the Branden Corner that I became sidetracked by a heavy memory-lane trip. This PARC business, and all that keeps coming up because of that, has been throwing the proverbial "monkey wrench" in my ability to stay on track with subjects I'd rather be thinking about. You wrote: All right, yes, that's pretty accurate to how I've been "reading" you. It does seems as if often you're including what the system itself is doing -- though I'm aware that isn't what your mean if you're talking about what non-cognitive systems are doing. But, if it's the observers who are describing in "levels of abstraction," I'm still not clear on how the observers acquire the ability to do that. I think I followed what you wrote about the computer analogy, up to here: Where is the existence of a program coming in - from the computer's perspective? A program is instructions that are put into the computer by us, though I'm aware that then we get computers which can self-program, but again the program is from our perspective. The computer isn't cognizant of goals, intentions, a task to be accomplished. However, if you analogize this to us, we are aware of having goals, intentions, some idea or sense of results we want to achieve. And this is from our internal perspective, not describing us from an outside observer perspective. I'm not clear on how supposedly this internal directing is arising with the computer analogy. Maybe I could put it this way: How does "the intentional stance" become internally-experienced intentions? This remains a feature of his views which I think Dennett just skips. I keep feeling reading him, but wait, there, you've stepped right past the question; you have a step in here where "Then a miracle occurs." (I expect you've seen the Harris cartoon I'm referring to, but if you haven't, ask and I'll describe it.) Re your evolution "sidetrack," you wrote: Don't be sorry. The sidetrack was useful to me, indeed it gives a bit of a glimmer of an answer to my own question above. (BTW, I still haven't even cracked open The Intentional Stance, which I'd expected to have finished by now. The PARC detour.) Ellen ___

It could be as simple as a person's not having logged on. The orange thingys only show if you're logged on. Ellen __

I think I wasn't clear in my comment about chess. It seems that both Jody and Barbara have interpreted my sentiment generically; but it was meant personally. I.e., I felt that learning how to play chess would have been a waste of my time; I didn't mean that I see it as a waste of anyone's time. Depends on what you like to do. I never had any interest in board games, card games (played with other people), indeed, games in general. I have at times played solitaire for long hours -- sometimes getting into a solitaire stretch for a few days at a time -- while mulling out some sort of issue. And an activity I could spend hours on was an eye-hand coordination...I suppose you could call it a "game"...named Labyrinth. The set-up was a rectangular box in which there were two linked frames, each controlled by a wheel (one wheel on the side facing the player, the other on the right side -- probably one could have gotten a special order for a left-handed person). The top frame was peppered by holes, and there was a snaking path along which you were supposed to maneuver a ball-bearing by turning the knobs j-u-s-t...so, in order to move the ball without its falling in a hole. I became really good at Labyrinth. I could maneuver the ball back and forth, back and forth along the path, almost never goofing. I'd eventually stop when I got tired. My skill at this irritated one of my brothers. He wanted to do better. So he practiced and practiced until he was nearly as good as I was at it. Ellen ___

I did something last night which I'm feeling today was a mistake of timing. I wanted to read a little before I went to sleep, so I started a chapter of PARC which up till then I'd skipped, the chapter titled "The Exploiters and the Exploited," in which there's some discussion of AR's "To Whom It May Concern." Speaking of "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels" ("Let us go then, you and I..." ["The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," lines from which have recently been quoted on this list])... I suppose I could have anticipated if I'd stopped to think of consequences that reading material in that chapter would send my psyche traipsing down the paths of a bleak memory-lane excursion. The New Jersey "hotel" -- "motel," precisely -- wasn't "cheap," though neither was it one of the more expensive; middle-priced. And it served as my dwelling place for multiple nights more than one -- for closer to a fortnight; and "restless" isn't a good description for that night, since I hardly moved; instead I sat, leaning on pillows propped against the headboard of the bed, feeling hollow inside and hollow-eyed, staring into the darkness of a room lit only by a faint glow of parking-lot light seeping round the edges of thick curtains. I sat until dawn -- I still have body-sense remembrance of the bed's dimensions, the dim shape of a nightstand and lamp to the left, the curtained windows to the right -- my mind forming connections, juxtaposing details from Rand's articles with details of her statement. I had read "To Whom It May Concern" early that afternoon, while it was being typeset. As I've mentioned before, I'd happened to meet the typesetter within a few days of my arrival in the New York City area, and she'd invited me to keep her company while she typeset the document. I'd talked with Barbara for awhile afterward, and then for a longer while, for a couple hours, with the typesetter at a coffee shop. I'll tell more of the story of that day and long night at some point. But I would first like to pose a question to anyone who has a copy of Rand's statement and who wants to try this experiment: Read the statement attempting as best you can to suspend from your mind your knowledge of the persons, the issues, the prior and subsequent history; read it pretending as best you can that it's a statement written by someone of whom you've never heard before, and about persons, issues, circumstances of which you know nothing. What sort of evaluations and impressions do you form of the document's method of approach, its content, and its author? Ellen ___

I signed on because I was listening to music in my back room where a couple times a week I pace and "think" -- a strange process, what goes on in the "thinking" involved -- while drinking a couple beers. I was remembering scenes from my own early love of the theory of evolution (which I became alerted to by some pictures of the evolution of the horse in one of my horse books) and other complex remembrances. So I went to the computer to write a note to Jenna. I'll post that note. It was/is: "Jenna, Just a quick note to say once again that I am SO glad you're here. That website you linked yesterday (or the day before) on one of your RoR posts: Yeah! Wow, yeah, electrified me too. I also "see" processes in such patterns as were shown. Sometimes I feel that all the talk on these issues isn't couched in my "language" at all, since that "language" is visualization in terms of biology. But how to express this (a) in words; (B) in terms of physics. I think there is a disjunct with core physics theory. I'm attempting to track down my sense of that "disjunct," but my progress is slow -- for one thing, it's requiring learning more of the details of physics than I'd previously explored myself, despite years of a romantic relationship with a physicist, and a long-standing interest (but it was more a side interest not a focused-upon interest) in understanding exactly how modern physics fits together -- or doesn't." Meanwhile, I see that Dragonfly has posted some long comments which I can't read at the moment -- tomorrow. However, my eye caught amidst those remarks, again, Dragonfly's usage "levels of abstraction." Dragonfly, could you possibly try to spell out a bit what that usage means to you? It just about freezes my comprehension every time I read it, since to me it's like assuming some sort of conceptual mentality already there before one explains how it got there. So I wonder if maybe you could elucidate what you mean by the verb "abstract." Ellen ___

Kat: That's another subject -- her views on chess -- which has been a perennial topic of conversation. The two friends -- Lee Pierson and Arnold Baise -- who have spent Thanksgiving with Larry and me ever since we moved to Connecticut (now upwards of 20 years) are both chess fans. And I think I'd be safe in saying that every Thanksgiving AR's chess opinions get talked about for awhile. Myself, I share her sentiment, sort of -- without the moralizing. I never had any desire to learn how to play chess, since it seemed to me an awful waste of thinking time. ;-) Ellen ___

Te-he. I earlier commented seconding Barbara about Ayn Rand's changeability and seemingly contradictory characteristics. An apropos zany thought crossed my mind: She was a dialectical person. ES ___

Hmm. It doesn't sound to me, then, like the same condition as "hydrocephalus" (or "hydrocephaly"). "Encephalitis" means inflammation of the brain. Possibly there are types of encephalitis in which fluid is built up in the cranial cavity with consequent shrinking of cortical mass. I don't know. If you find anything further, I'd be interested to hear it. Thanks for your words of appreciation, and the good wishes re health. I regret that I can't participate more extensively in the discussions here. I'm certainly interested by what's being said!! (And I, too, am grateful to Michael and Kat for providing this forum.) Ellen ___

John Enright: Agreed. He was well pleased by the splitting between David and Leonard, and the founding of IOS. Wasn't it George who gave the opening speech in which IOS was described as "a home for homeless Objectivists"? The person I'm curious about in the list Barbara gave is Susan Ludel. The only thing I know about the circumstances of her divorce from Leonard Peikoff is that he was quite upset by the breakup of the marriage and he had some sessions with Edith Packer at the time. Did the break between them involve philosophic issues such that she'd later be considered philosophically non-grata? Or did she develop differences with Objectivism after she and Leonard had split? Does anyone know details? Ellen EDIT: Darn, words can be tricky. The word "sessions" could be taken to imply something the truth of which I don't know. I'm not sure if Leonard had some formal counseling "sessions" with Edith, or if he just talked with her as a friend (who happened to be a psychotherapist). My source wasn't Edith herself but a client of Edith's to whom Edith on occasion said maybe a bit more than technically she should have. I remember a certain number of details, but I'm unsure as to the exact status -- formal or not -- of the "sessions." ___

Philip Smith, via Barbara: Interesting to get the story straight from Phil. I was figuring that it was probably something just of that sort -- especially when I read that the change had been made at the request of one of the actors. I thought that the actor might have been the person who played Guts Regan. He was a professional actor, hired for the production -- and quite good; I thought he was the best of the group in his performance. The line was probably something which used words which had acquired a meaning which weren't intended when Rand wrote the play (an example of that sort of thing, various words referring to homosexuals which once upon a time didn't have that reference). And after delivering this line on a few nights, and getting snickers because of the unintended meaning, the actor wanted to drop the line. Some "systematic and personal betrayal" on the Smiths' part. Ellen ___

In a post on the first page of this thread, "AR's Aura," 2/17/06, I described an instance of her rapid changes: Valliant, in Chapter II, Part One, of PARC -- titled "Rand and Non-Rand, at the Same Time and in the Same Respect" -- accuses the Brandens of presenting Rand as impossibly contradictory. But in fact she did have a range of characteristics some of which might seem contradictory when juxtaposed. Rand was a very complex woman. You will find no simple answer in an attempt to understand AR. ;-) Ellen ___

Roger replying to Dragonfly: Except that, insofar as I'm aware, the two of you don't have the same definition of "determinism." Dragonfly, I believe, would sign on to the Van Inwagen definition -- see below -- adopted by Dennett (see pg. 25 of Freedom Evolves), whereas you, Roger -- or so I understood from some posts of yours awhile back on RoR -- want to change the meaning to allow for more than one physically possible future. Van Inwagen, in An Essay on Free Will, 1983, via Dennett: "Determinism is the thesis that 'there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.'" Ellen ___

Roger replying to Paul: The term you want is "hydrocephalus" or "hydrocephaly," defined in my Webster's New Collegiate as "an abnormal increase in the amount of cerebrospinal fluid within the cranial cavity that is accompanied by expansion of the cerebral ventricles, enlargement of the skull and esp. the forehead, and atrophy of the brain." When I was a teenager, I knew a young lad who was a hydrocephalic -- also mildly cerebral palsic. He died before the age of ten. As I recall, the general life-span prognosis for hydrocephaly is: death at an early age. Of course, medical knowledge of how to treat the condition might have improved since my teen years. Ellen ___

I haven't had time the last several days to read this list, and am just catching up to the causality discussion -- though I must now discontinue reading in mid-stream to again leave home for the evening. Rapidly, however, I would like to enter for the record that I agree at least with Dragonfly's comment above -- except I wouldn't universalize it to "all" Objectivists. The description is applicable to a great many Objectivists. And I'd like to add, for the record, that despite my presence on this and other lists identified as Objectivist lists, I do not now consider nor have I ever considered myself an Objectivist. (And I do not swallow Rand's comment uncritically; I've always been aware that it was (a) imprecise and (b) led to contradiction with her views on volition.) As to the anti-science characteristic which Dragonfly notes in Objectivists, I think that's true of a lot of Objectivists. Rand I think wasn't anti-science but she wasn't scientifically knowledgeable -- and she did have this view that modern physics must be corrupt. (See, e.g., the little story I told about an exchange between her and Larry. There were other occasions on which she exhibited this same attitude.) In a rush --- Ellen ___

The scene that really angered me was the one in which Galt refuses to let Francisco tell Hank that Dagny was still alive after she'd crashed in the valley. Nathaniel says in his memoir that he was bothered by that, and Ayn said something about worrying that Galt would look wishy-washy if he made an exception for a person not on strike. I thought it was too cruel to countenance and made Rand look as if she was stretching a point way too far. The line "Pity, Francisco?" I sometimes think of in mockery, answering, "Hell, yes." Ellen ___

Phil: That's not quite the same issue I was meaning, Phil. Marsha wrote that she thinks Rand "often did takes on how honest and sincere a person was, in the way she treated them." This isn't an issue just of responding in terms of an attitude someone is conveying at a particular time; it's one of making an overall judgment of character, concluding on the basis of a particular instance more than there's been enough information provided yet to conclude. And then maybe coming to the opposite conclusion about the same person on a later occasion on the basis of how the person presents then. The context we were talking in was that of people she'd encounter in lecture circumstances. But I've heard some reports from people who knew her well that the same sort of thing would occur in long-standing relationships, as if the "credit" which people would (reasonably) expect would have been built up in her eyes wouldn't carry over. You'd be praised by her one time but then accused of harboring a flaw in your soul on the next occasion you acted in a way or expressed an opinion she didn't like. Ellen ___

Phil: Phil, Apparently you're interpreting Childs' definition as "Objectivist cynicism," but it's nothing of the kind. The point he was making is that there's always selection in constructing a narrative -- and history is a narrative. One can not recount every "fact," and all one would have would be a meaningless hodgepodge if one tried to do so. E.g., make the experiment of recounting what happened in your own life earlier today; you'll select according to your standards of what's significant and produce a narrative. Ellen ___

Marsha: Going on for six years. Last we saw you two in person was at the Vancouver TOC Summer Seminar in 2000. I heard part of that. I think it was during a course LP was giving which was a year or so later than Allan's music course, but I'm not sure which of the two it was. She used a stronger word than "bother." Maybe it was "pester." She sounded as if she thought you were being aggressive in trying to get information from Frank. I recall your telling how she sought you out the next time and apologized. In regard to her protectiveness of Frank, something which struck me as poignant and as so indicitive of her feelings toward him was on the Phil Donahue show -- I gather it was the second time she appeared there; I didn't see the first time. Frank had died not long before, and Phil Donahue asked her something about if it didn't tempt her to think of Frank in heaven now. She said that she'd asked herself about this, and that (from memory, probably not exact): "If I thought he were standing someplace now, in front of St. Peter, I would kill myself to be there to tell him how good Frank was." I was heartwrenched by her loving protectiveness, but at the same time I thought: How unconsciously arrogant!, the presumption that (a) St. Peter couldn't discern Frank's goodness without her help; and (B) that Frank himself wouldn't be able to convince on his own. Re your comment in another post: I think so too. If a person came across a certain way, she would be very benevolent in her treatment. That's why, for instance, I was glad it was that girl Julie who was going to ask the Beethoven question. (I told the story on an earlier thread, I think the one about the AR Questions book.) Julie had (in abundance) just that quality of open innocent questioning which I thought AR would warm to. She could change her judgment from one time to the next, though, sometimes without apparent carry-over. Ellen ___

A very quick response only to one part of your post, Jenna. You wrote: That "vibe" is/has been/probably always will be "floating around" amongst some -- and probably by far, by very far, the majority -- of those who have been attracted enough by Rand to pursue studying her non-fiction work. As to why: a subject explored from some angles on this list, a subject explorable from angle after angle, the same subject as "What in the human psyche produces religions?" As you read more on this list, you'll find various ideas on the issue which you might find interesting, though by no means "definitive." Again, glad you're aboard! Ellen ___

I've wanted ever since March 5 to post this, in particular for Jonathan's enjoyment, since Jonathan I know has read and loved a novel of Samuel R. Delany (pronounced de-LANE-y), the novel Dhalgren. When he was in high school Delany met and became special friends with a young poetess (subsequently a noted poetess) named Marilyn Hacker. Though Delany was homosexual by basic impetus, he could function heterosexually, and did thus with Marilyn. She became pregnant, and they married. (She then miscarried; later she became pregnant again and they had a daughter; eventually -- and amicably, as far as I know, since they were still friends last I heard of their life stories -- they divorced.) In an autobiographical book The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965, he tells this tale: [pg. 82.] 25.25 [He numbered the vignettes:] I am not a poet. Nor have I ever thought of myself as one. (A love for reading poetry, which I have, is not the same as a talent for writing it, which I lack.) But, like all young writers, from time to time I would try my hand at it--none of it, despite how hard I woked on it, very good. Marilyn's response to one of my early attempts about this time (and it set me chuckling in our four dark rooms for an hour) was: There was a young man named Delany whose verse wasn't overly brainy. When you start to get with him, he completely drops the concept of rhythm, and after a while he doesn't even bother to rhyme. I have never considered myself any sort of poet since. The difficulties of prose are quite enough. -- Ellen ___

Thanks for posting the Roy Childs quote, Roger. I lacked time and email energy for posting it myself and commenting on it when I read Michael's similar (though I think mockingly intended) definition. The mystery breviator of the quote might have been Jeff Riggenbach, though I'm not sure. I am sure that he's well aware of the Roy Childs article, since he speaks of that, quoting the full Childs definition, along with other similar comments from other historians (and much else by way of elaborating) in his forthcoming book: Witness of the Times. Ellen ___

I think it's well to beware of assuming, just because Objectivists are so often so incredibly simplistic in their views on key Objectivist issues, that Ayn Rand was likewise simplistic. I think it's good to remember that she was very much smarter than a large percentage of her followers. On the "choice to think" issue though... When I got to that part of Galt's Speech (it's within a few pages of the start of the speech), I was stopped WHAP in my "tracks," wondering WHAT does she mean? I tried for maybe an hour or so to figure it out (meanwhile I'd skimmed frenziedly through the rest of the speech looking for any hints), then closed the book and went to sleep. (I was reading in the early morning hours, after a long week in which I'd had a group of friends home for a horsebackriding party, and I'd ridden by day and read by night. My friends had left the day of the night I got to the speech.) The next several days I went around trying really hard not to think, to see if I could do that -- since I'd assumed that she meant "to have mental content." I've never believed that what she says in the speech is at all clear, though I know people who say they felt that they understood it right off. In '97, I had a bit of exchange with Nathaniel on the issue, trying to get through to him why I find what she says in the speech deuced unclear. He, I gathered, wasn't in the mood for that discussion at the moment and he replied giving the issue short shrift, saying that he thought the meaning was perfectly clear from the context, and that what "they" (he and AR) meant by thinking was "any purposeful cognitive activity which has contact with reality as its goal." I've always wondered -- because she never spelled out and because of the way she herself seemed to refer to persons who, as she viewed them, don't think -- if the way she arrived at her idea of thinking as the locus of volition was something as basically simple as this: That she asked herself what did she do that others didn't do, and answered that she thought and they didn't. (Remember, for instance, the scene in Atlas where the cigarette vendor who has a newstand in the Taggart terminal says to Dagny about liking to picture the glowing tip of a cigarette as a spark of fire going along with the spark of thought in a mind (remember, folks, don't interpret this anachronistically; it was written years before the cigarettes and cancer research), and Dagny wonders, "Do they ever think?" The incident seemed suggestive to me of how maybe AR herself felt.) --- And, to Jenna: I, too, am delighted to see you here! I always look out for your posts on RoR. Ellen ___

By "thinking" she meant the effortful attempt to attain and /or maintain clarity of one's mental contents and to sift and test those contents for consistency and accuracy, not merely the having of mental contents. "Thinking" in her meaning entails an expenditure of effort; it doesn't "just happen." It isn't just having thoughts. I don't know of any place in all of her writings (though there might be such a place in a journal entry -- I haven't read all of the Journals book -- or in a commentary which I'm not remembering in ITOE) where she herself spells out her meaning. However, I was in attendance during a Q & A when she was also present following one of Leonard Peikoff's lectures and when he answered along the lines I've indicated. One of the attendees had asked the question, What was meant by "the choice to think?," and had added that he (AR assumed that the questioner was a "he") "couldn't stop thinking." I was sitting where I could hear her when she wryly muttered almost under her breath upon the question's being read, "I'd like to meet him." Leonard also heard her, and he repeated her quip. The audience duly laughed, ha, ha, ha. Then he answered with essentially the answer I've given (I don't remember his exact words, which probably elaborated beyond mine; he always tended to be long-winded). Ellen ___