Robert Campbell

Barbara, Unfortunately, by showing up on NoodleFood when you did, you gave Ms. Hsieh a pretext for an action that she was planning to take anyway. A planned series of denunciations... what a way to structure a life. Robert Campbell

Victor, You do have to watch out for wooden nickels. The ARI crowd has been known to hand them out from time to time. As it happens, I attended David Kelley's fatal speech--the only Laissez-Faire Books sponsored event that I ever went to, though I did visit the store on another occasion. Dr. Kelley spent his time trying to convince the libertarians in attendance that they needed a philosophical grounding for their politics. The philosophy he said they needed was... Objectivism. Peikoff's decision to condemn him for appearing there was pure hypocrisy. Dr. Peikoff was ignorant of nature and policies of Laissez-Faire Books the same way, and to the same extent, that Andrew Bernstein was ignorant of the nature and policies of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Robert Campbell

RCR, I know exactly what you mean. Welcome! Robert Campbell

Rich, Having attended one of NB's intensives, and a workshop (both many years ago now), I know whereof you speak. You realize that if you said "goodness" on SOLOP, with the shade of meaning that it had in your previous post, Lindsay Perigo would snort at you for days. But then, Mr. Perigo's distrust of counselors and clinicians works well together with Jim Valliant and Casey Fahy's blind praise for Ayn Rand's performances as an amateur therapist. Robert

Rich, I've benefited from Nathaniel Branden's advice on a couple of occasions myself. The Psychology of Self-Esteem came out when academic psychologists were just starting to get serious about the subject. As a statement of theory, it was way ahead of anything else being done then. Dr. Branden's subsequent books have also been written for the general public, and pigeonholed by most academics as "pop psychology" or "self help." But all you have to do is pull another couple of self-esteem books down from the shelf and compare them with any one of Dr. Branden's. You won't see the crispness of argument, the clarity, or the eloquence in the other books. In the last decade, academic research on self-esteem has taken some strides ahead. There are other treatises or theory books now with messages pretty similar to Dr. Branden's--books by Bednar and Peterson, or by Mruk, come to mind, along with articles by authors like Kernis, or Morf and Rhodewalt. Dr. Branden's work is still a lot easier to read. Some of the ARIans haven't seen much of his work, and have no real notion of its significance. Others ignore the content of what he's said and written because they've been taught that he is Satanic, just as some ARIans never read anything by David Kelley, or ignore the content of what they've read, because they've been told he has thrown out objectivity and doesn't believe in moral judgment. For the life of me, though, I don't see how any of these folks can pick up a bound volume of The Objectivist Newsletter or The Objectivist without noticing that Nathaniel Branden is everywhere. Their guru, Leonard Peikoff, had only started becoming a major contributor to The Objectivist the year before NB was given the boot. Who knows? Maybe for them each article bylined "Nathaniel Branden" is surrounded by fnords. Robert Campbell PS. Nathaniel Branden also wrote articles on other subjects that have been frequently used without attribution. See http://www.solopassion.com/node/1379#comment-15254 for a really juicy example.

Mr. Dawe, If you want to talk about multiple grounds for moderating Jonathan at RoR on RoR, go ahead. You have no authority here, the policies are different, consequently such comments come across as inappropriate. Robert Campbell

Roger, You're quite right, I've violated standard psychometric practice.... To make a point. So far no one on SOLOP has actually answered the questions, though one contributor complained that none of them sufficiently specified the context. The rest have been content to rail. Robert

Kat, I can't prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt, but it strikes me as highly likely. Precisely. And I suspect that some of Dr. Peikoff's followers have interpreted his statement as giving them carte blanche. That's why I called it "notorious" in A Wee Test. You'll notice that some members of SOLOP gang were incensed at my choice of words. Robert

Kat, I've heard, from more than one source, that Leonard Peikoff adopted his view on "privacy lies" only after The Passion of Ayn Rand came out--and, yes, he had someone's affair with Dr. Uncitable specifically in mind. I don't recall him making an exception for "privacy lies" in his late 1970s lectures series on Objectivism, where he did make an exception for lies told to criminals, dictators, and the like. But there it was in OPAR. One of the ironies, of course, is that Ayn Rand lied to him about the affair. He didn't learn about it until after her death. Robert PS. You'll be amused to know that Ms. Hsieh is on the record opposing "privacy lies," and has yet to make a public retraction!

Michael, The wee test is now available in the Humor section. Robert Campbell

I call this a semi-satire, because, while designed to amuse, the wee test can actually be given a straightforward set of answers. Robert Campbell

(Subtitle borrowed from Matt Groening, Graduate School Is Hell.) A passage in OPAR that has become rather notorious reads as follows: Wondering who or what else might be encompassed in Dr. Peikoff’s dictum, I put together a little survey. It should take about two minutes of your time to complete. Needless to say, the statements should be read as pertaining to enemies of Objectivism qua enemies of Objectivism. If the enemy of Objectivism is also a criminal, dictator, or terrorista, he or she is already covered. The wording of the completions seems to be in vogue among younger ARIans today, though I am convinced that such duty-oriented language would have made Ayn Rand gag. No matter, the meaning is clear enough. ******** 1. For an Objectivist, lying to an enemy of Objectivism is __ Morally impermissible __ Morally permissible __ Morally obligatory 2. For an Objectivist, lying about an enemy of Objectivism is __ Morally impermissible __ Morally permissible __ Morally obligatory 3. For an Objectivist, withholding credit for an accomplishment by an enemy of Objectivism is __ Morally impermissible __ Morally permissible __ Morally obligatory 4. For an Objectivist, publishing the private communications of an enemy of Objectivism without consent is __ Morally impermissible __ Morally permissible __ Morally obligatory 5. For an Objectivist, rewriting history to remove an enemy of Objectivism from the narrative is __ Morally impermissible __ Morally permissible __ Morally obligatory 6. For an Objectivist, taking credit for the achievement of an enemy of Objectivism is __ Morally impermissible __ Morally permissible __ Morally obligatory So, tell me what you think. Robert Campbell Professeur de Psychologie Apôtre de l’Arbitraire Citationniste Enragé

Dennis and Michael, I'm not quite finished over there--have some cleanup to do tomorrow. Gotta fix my French, too. I really appreciate your support. I thought I'd seen it all, but some of the "arguments" at SOLOP still make my jaw drop. Robert Campbell Professeur de Psychologie Apotre de l'Arbitraire Citationniste Enrage'

Rich, I overlooked a quotation from Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged today, which of course Fred Weiss et al. pounced on. The irony is that it's the only substantial passage on self-esteem in Galt's Speech that Tara Smith failed to cite or quote in her book. A minor oversight on her part, which I should have double-checked, but that's why I missed it. Anyhow, I'll have some comments on Galt's Speech and on Peikoff's treatment of self-esteem (which cites only Galt's Speech!) tomorrow. I've done enough on SOLOP for one day. I'll fix my rusty French, too. The conspiracy theory charge came about because of my "Fractious Factions" entry back in April. I described the shady deals that Mr. Perigo, Mr. Valliant, Ms. Hsieh, Mr. Maurone, and some minor leaguers were engaged in behind the scenes. My sources were solid; in fact, one of the minor leaguers (Mr. Mazza) foolishly left evidence about who was asking for his email address out for all to see in the comment threads to his blog. To this day, none of them will talk about getting together to run Regi Firehammer off Ms. Hsieh's blog the same day that he showed up there. It was my description of the Firehammer takedown that prompted the conspiracy theory charges. None of the participants dared explain how they all happened to be hanging around when Ms. Hsieh needed choral backup after deleting Mr. Firehammer's comment and denouncing him. I'm sure you've noticed that they still haven't. Robert

Rich, Mr. Perigo's name-calling varies in inspiration. A lot is both lame and mean-spirited, as you know. He calls Rebirth of Reason the "TOC FRoRd Board," which, besides being grossly unfair to Mr. Rowlands, doesn't work when enunciated in an American accent. The recent acts of roping off and placing on moderation over at RoR aren't consistent with Mr. Perigo's insinuations about the board's institutional leaning. And the last couple of days, Ethan Dawe has popped up on a couple of threads at SOLOP wagging the finger at me about one thing or another. He claims that others are offending, too, but wags no fingers in their direction. I think it's his way of saying, "Don't come back to RoR." Whatever. Nobody's telling me not to come back here. Robert Campbell

Dragonfly and Jonathan, Yes, board owners have the right to set board policy. But I don't think RoR is going to become a better board because you've been roped off into the Dissent section. Quite the contrary. I've been gradually losing interest in RoR. With these latest developments, my rate of posting will drop even further. Robert Campbell

Since the post was lost during the hacker attack, I'd like to remind everyone that Neil Parille has posted several entries on The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics at http://www.objectiblog.blogspot.com/ and plans to continue for a while. Robert Campbell

Kat, I like the current skin. Of the others that are listed as available, I also like the Mocha and the Pop Orange. Robert Campbell PS. The expressions of Schadenfreude over at SOLOP are revolting. I should hope that if their site is ever hacked into, no one here will write about them as they have recently written about us.

tndbay, Your last post lost me in a couple of places. B. F. Skinner wasn't terribly interested in neurology. He maintained that he could account for learning without knowing the details of the organism's neurology, or waiting for results from the wet labs. What's more, I don't see how a concept is an association, or a chain of associations. Associationism is currently at a very low ebb in the cognitive sciences, because it isn't able to explain much of anything that the mind does. Robert Campbell

I won't be arriving till early Sunday afternoon. Looking forward to seeing everyone... Robert Campbell

Hi Victor, See pp. 683-684 of Journals of Ayn Rand for Rand's notes on talks by Noam Chomsky (and several others) on linguistics and philosophy. Chomsky's talk was titled "Some observations on linguistic structure." It is clear, both from Rand's notes and from what Chomsky was publishing during that phase of his career, that he was focusing on some rather technical issues pertaining to sentence structure. If Rand had read anything by Chomsky before May 21, 1961, when she made the journal entry, or attended any other lecture by him, this has yet to be documented. Rand does not seem entirely sure what the point of Chomsky-style grammar is. She makes fun of his tree structures as "pure Rube Goldberg." She also asks what the relationship between sentence structure and meaning might be in Chomsky's theory (a good question, which I rather doubt that Chomsky made much of an effort to answer on that occasion). (Unfortunately, David Harriman, the editor of Rand's published journals, had less of an idea than she did about what Chomsky was talking about. He inserted a note explaining that Chomskyan tree diagrams for sentence structure are part of "modern symbolic logic," which is incorrect.) In 1961, Chomsky had apparently already decided that language learning requires some kind of innate representation of types of sentence structures, but he had not yet pressed a case for his view. In the absence of complaints from Rand about innate ideas (no remarks on the subject in her journal entry). I think it safe to conclude that he didn't bring the issue up in his talk. In 1961, Chomsky had yet to publish anything on politics. He didn't start doing that until he had become more of a "public intellectual." So Rand's take on Chomsky in 1961 was not a reaction to his advocacy of innate ideas, or to his New Left politics. I doubt she knew about either at the time. Rand quoted Chomsky in 1972 because he was one of the few intellectuals making arguments in principle against behaviorism--and because his arguments were cogent. I doubt she knew that he had already taken B. F. Skinner's attempt to explain language learning apart in 1959. Chomsky, in fact, helped to overthrow behaviorism and replace it with modern cognitive psychology. A couple of lessons here: One is that the same person can put forward brilliantly good ideas and brilliantly bad ones. Chomsky's arguments against Skinner are brilliantly good. His advocacy of innate grammatical structures (in Chomskyan notation!) may be brilliant--at least it has some rhetorical effectiveness--but isn't so good. His insistence that all political evils in the world since 1945 must be laid at the feet of the United States government is a bad one, and some of Chomsky's defenses of it strike me as dishonest. The second is that Rand was in no position to make the judgment about Chomsky that she scribbled down in 1961. In 1972, she at least seemed willing to acknowledge that he had some good points as well as some bad ones. Robert Campbell

Ellen, Thank you for the list. Erich Veyhl (correct spelling) was the editor of Ergo during most of the period that I worked on that newspaper. He was working on a Ph. D. in Applied Mathematics at the time. Nick Bykovetz was a friend of Veyhl's who contributed several articles to Ergo under pseudonyms. Just why he felt a need to do this I don't know, but his authorship was an open secret among the staffers (I recall one of his articles coming in and being attributed to the "Ukrainian horse"). Bykovetz was working on his Ph. D. in Physics. Robert Campbell PS. Why would Fred Weiss raise doubts about being quoted in the transcripts?

Jenna, I hope your hospital stay won't stretch on too much longer. Meanwhile, I've been remiss in not responding more quickly about Eleanor Rosch's work. Now that I've finished teaching my summer school course (and gotten my slides ready for two talks at the TOC Summer Seminar), let me see whether I can net out Rosch's main contributions to the study of categorization. In the early to mid-1970s Rosch put forward what became known as the prototype theory of concepts. (Her earliest publications are under a married name, Heider--worth keeping in mind if you're tracking them with PsycInfo or another database.) According to Rosch, human concepts generally lack clear definitions, and whether something qualifies as an instance of a concept is therefore not an "all or none" affair. Instead, concepts are arranged around a prototype, a "most typical" exemplar. Instancehood is "graded": some instances are better than others (i.e., more similar to the prototype), and instances that are poor enough may not belong to that concept at all, but a sharp line can't be drawn between poor instances and non-instances. For instance, most people think that a bluebird is a "good" bird and an emu is a "not so good" bird. So the protoypical bird must be fairly close to a bluebird--small, able to fly, able to sing, etc. For Rosch, such judgments of "good" or "not so good" aren't made in addition to judgments about instancehood; they are part and parcel of judging whether something something is a bird or not. In fact, people are faster, on the average, at pressing the "Yes" button in response to "A bluebird is a bird" than in response to "An emu is a bird," even though they know that both statements are true. I've been told that Rosch later denied intending prototype theory as a general theory of concepts. It would be hard to infer this from her initial articles on prototypes, however, as none of these stated any limits to the theory. Here are two challenges to protoytpe theory: Armstrong, Armstrong, and Gleitman (1983) asked participants in their study to give examples of "really good" and "not so good" odd numbers. 3 is really good; 54,267, let's say, is not so good. Yet their participants had no doubts about what qualifies as an odd number and what doesn't; there's nothing "fuzzy" about the boundaries of the odd number category. Most people would say that a perch or a trout is a "really good" fish, a puffer is a "not so good" fish, and a seahorse is "really not very good" fish. A killer whale looks a lot more like the most typical fish a lot more than a seahorse does. Yet most people will say that a killer whale is not a fish and a seahorse is. Isn't some principle from outside of prototype theory required to explain how people make this kind of distinction? Robert Campbell PS. One of my favorite Rosch articles is about categorization but not really about prototype theory: Rosch, E., Mervis, C., Gray, W. D., Johnson, D. M., & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 8, 382-439.

In response to Ellen's query, Bryan Register's piece The universality and employment of concepts, Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, 1(2), 211-244 appeared in Spring 2000 and was quite critical of Rand's theory of concepts. I don't think Register's approach would qualify as Peircean, though. An article about Rand and Peirce by Marc Champagne is due out in the Fall 2006 issue (Volume 8, number 1). Robert Campbell

Victor, I see little value in lumping all "modern intellectuals" together, as though there are no important differences between astronomy professors and Lit Crit mavens--and as though there are no relevant differences between Camille Paglia and Stanley Fish (both prominent Lit Critters). In my field, psychology, Ayn Rand is simply not on most people's radar screens. To get most psychology professors to pay attention to Rand, you'll have to be prepared to explain what's important about her ideas, and what makes them relevant to psychological research. Except in the presence of a few zealots, you won't be called on prove that she is less pernicious than Lenin or Hitler. As Michael points out, Rand was awfully quick to condemn "modern intellectuals," regardless of what they had to say. For instance, in her published Journals, Rand referred to Noam Chomsky as an "elite social-metaphysical witch doctor." This estimate was apparently based on attending one public lecture about language structure that he gave in 1961. Yet, in 1972, when Rand reviewed B. F. Skinner's book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, the only published review that she praised was Chomsky's, in the New York Review of Books. In fact, she quoted Chomsky's review at some length. Might she have been just a little hasty in her initial judgment? Robert Campbell