Robert Campbell

Michael, In the same post that you referenced http://www.solopassion.com/node/901#comment-8626 Mr. Perigo keeps right on digging himself in deeper, regarding the charge that he agreed to publish James Kilbourne's "Drooling Beast" on SOLOHQ in order to trap Barbara Branden into endorsing it. In the very process of denying that he set BB up, Mr. Perigo keeps confirming that that is precisely what he did. Robert Campbell

John, You're right about Greg Salmieri not being a "stealth" Objectivist. He's not like "Noumenal Self" or several of the initialed commenters at NoodleFood--or, for that matter, like kraorh on this board. However, when Diana Hsieh began her conversion to ARIanism, I noticed that she would refer freely to Mr. Salmieri in conversation (for instance, when she said she had accepted his case for never publishing in JARS), but in her blog entries she has most often referred to an "ARI friend," or other words to that effect. And when I asked her point-blank, in April 2004, whether the Mysterious Stranger who had been running down Chris Sciabarra in comments on her blog was Salmieri, she said merely that she had promised not to reveal MS's identity. Beyond that, I can only hypothesize. It would be helpful to know, for instance, whether Allan Gotthelf would approve of Mr. Salmieri openly campaigning against Chris Sciabarra out in cyberspace. Or how Mr. Salmieri personally assesses the impact of public involvement in factional food fights on his prospects of future employment. What is clear is that Mr. Salmieri has been strongly encouraging junior ARIans, such as Diana Hsieh and Mike Mazza, to campaign against Chris Sciabarra--while trying to keep his own name out of the campaigns. Robert Campbell

Roger, You asked, It's true that anonymous commenters on NoodleFood are always called "Mysterious Stranger" (contrary to the former practice on the Flybottle, where they were uniformly tagged "Anonymous Coward"). Therefore, others could have appeared, from time to time, as Mysterious Stranger. However, the MS that Chris Sciabarra was complaining about is the same one that I complained about on a couple of occasions... i.e., Greg Salmieri. Same modus operandi, same extreme animus against CMS, and high percentage of agreement between this Mysterious Stranger's opinions and those I have heard and seen ascribed to Greg Salmieri, whether under his full name or his initials. Robert Campbell PS. Ms. Hsieh always wants to be tipped off in advance as to who is going to comment anonymously. An unscheduled anonymous commenter will quickly be met with a challenge to reveal himself or herself...

Rich, Diana Hsieh's public denunciation of Chris Sciabarra has both personal and political motives. I'm not 100% sure what the personal motives are. In any event, I'm not going to discuss my hypotheses about them in a public forum. The political motives are easier to figure out, anyway. As you suggested, they have to do with institutional "bloodsport." The people who run the Ayn Rand Institute are not particularly trusting. They envision themselves as surrounded by "enemies of Objectivism." Diana Hsieh was associated with no fewer than four major "enemies of Objectivism": Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, David Kelley, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra. Her associations with DK and CMS each lasted about 10 years. To gain the trust of the principals at ARI, Ms. Hsieh has had to delouse herself. Hence the decision never to seek publication in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (Dec. 2003), the decision to quit working on Nathaniel Branden's website (Jan. 2004), the public denunciation of David Kelley (Feb. 2004), the private denunciation of NB and BB (June 2004, announcing a public denunciation at a time of Ms. Hsieh's choosing), the public denunciation of NB and BB (Aug. 2004), and, finally, the public denunciation of CMS (Apr. 2006). Chris Sciabarra is a high-value target to ARI because he has challenged the organization's claim to a monopoly on Rand scholarship, and has done so by example, with his books and with JARS. What's more, he has put forward an interpretation of Rand that is contrary to both her self-presentation and to the official line taken by Leonard Peikoff and others at ARI. So CMS is part of the iniquitous past that Ms. Hsieh has had to renounce, to gain acceptance at ARI. And he is perceived as a rival to ARI, as well as an enemy, so the principals at ARI would presumably not mind seeing him denounced. One further wrinkle: Peikoff's "Fact and Value" implies (and it's a really shallow implication...) that any mentally competent adult who knows the official interpretation of Objectivism and rejects it is evil. "Ergo," Chris Sciabarra is evil. But since that implication is not one that ARIans are always comfortable admitting to, there arises a felt need to prove that any "enemy of Objectivism" just happens to be personally immoral. Hence the 12,600 words. Robert Campbell

Barbara, As it happens, I read that passage from Ayn Rand Answers yesterday, after seeing part of it quoted in Tara Smith's book Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics. The usual defense of "To Whom It May Concern" claims that Rand wasn't obliged to tell the whole truth in it. According to her own professed standards, she was. Robert Campbell

WSS, Mysterious Stranger's secret identity is Greg Salmieri. Mr. Salmieri is a doctoral student in philosophy at Pitt, where he is Allan Gotthelf's research assistant. He was Diana Hsieh's chief adviser in her transition to the Ayn Rand Institute. Ms. Hsieh consistently refuses to confirm MS's identity, but it's never been hard to figure out. Robert Campbell

Ellen, I'll have to review what David Kelley said about primary and secondary qualities--it's been too long since I read the book. As for the alleged integration of sensations into percepts, I agree with Gibson on that score, and disagree with Rand, Peikoff, and Kelley. The entire notion of sensations is a holdover from 19th century thinking. Rand would have been better off without it. Robert Campbell

Rich, Yeah, Mike Mazza accused me of trying to scare Angie, by linking to the policies for the Harry Binswanger List, and suggesting she read the Loyalty Oath. I don't see how Lindsay Perigo can complain about the "B-S" (Binswanger-Schwartz) culture at ARI, on the one hand, and insist, on the other, that the ARIans who now post on SOLOP have moved past that culture. Because, so far, none of the ARI-aligned contributors to SOLOP have criticized a single action taken by either Harry Binswanger or Peter Schwartz. Which leads me to infer that either (a) they all approve of every action taken by Binswanger or Schwartz or (b) some of them may not approve of some actions taken by Binswanger or Schwartz--but no way do they dare say so on a public forum. So much for the purported signs of progress at ARI. Robert Campbell

Nick, I read With Charity toward None, when it was still fairly new, and haven't looked at it since. I recall O'Neill arguing that Rand's philosophy inevitably implies that the rich are good and the poor are depraved. I also recall finding O'Neill's argument for this conclusion underwhelming... Robert Campbell

Does anyone know what Lindsay Perigo is talking about here? http://www.solopassion.com/node/893#comment-8440 I haven't received any such message from Nathaniel. Maybe that just proves that I'm out of the loop... Robert Campbell

WSS, Heidi and I loved the Keats cartoon. And it never hurts to exercise my rudimentary Italian... While Diana Hsieh never met Chris Sciabarra, and may not have met Barbara Branden... she did meet David Kelley and Nathaniel Branden. She also met me, and a bunch of other ex-friends. So I don't think whether she met Chris (who does little traveling, on account of his medical condition) has anything to do with her decision to denounce him. Robert Campbell

Ellen and L W, Mike Mazza's post about Lee Pierson and Harry Binswanger purportedly mixing it up can be found here: http://www.solopassion.com/node/893#comment-7989 I've met Lee Pierson once, and can't say that I know him. My vague impression--only a vague impression--was that he is inclined toward Objectivist orthodoxy. I'd be interested in knowing how he thinks Kelley got Gibson wrong. Robert

Jenna, What you get out of Rand's writings of course depends on what you bring to them. The more rigid Randians all make regular references to context; Leonard Peikoff even used to talk about the "spiral progression of knowledge." But they can't abide hermeneutics (i.e., the context-dependency of interpretation), even though following through on Rand's systems thinking would require them to acknowledge the hermeneutics. This, I think, is one reason why many react so negatively to The Russian Radical. When I first tried to relate some of Rand's claims in ITOE to data about early word use by toddlers (I did an independent study with a developmental psychologist named Jeremy Anglin on this subject, back in 1974), most of ITOE seemed clear to me. As I learned more about developmental psychology, including alternatives not considered by Rand, or not well described by her, or not ruled out by the arguments she put forward to try to rule them out, parts of it became less clear than they had once been... For an even longer time, I would have agreed with you that "The Objectivist Ethics" (in The Virtue of Selfishness) was extremely clear. But as I tried to explain moral development, and I learned more about Aristotle and then about other Ancient moral thinkers, the more gaps I saw in some parts of it. What exactly is a principle, for instance? Is being rational or honest or productive just a matter of understanding a proposition that identifies some basic fact about the way human beings function successfully in the world, and sticking with that understanding--or is there a component of skill involved? To be continued... Robert Campbell

Jenna, Rand tied concept formation very closely to language learning. (So closely, in fact, that in the workshop material that was added to the 2nd edition of ITOE, she asserts that a bona fide concept, as opposed to a "qualified instance" of a concept, must have a single word to go with it--see p. 177). That was the prevailing view among cognitive psychologists at the time she was writing ITOE--but it is much harder to sustain today. Infancy research from the 1980s onward has pretty clearly established that babies categorize things by the second half of the first year-- before they have learned any words. So if a concept needs a word, that's categorization before concept formation. It's not that Rand was completely insensitive to categorizing without language--she just didn't quite know what to do with it (see pp. 159-183 from the workshops, on Implicit Concepts and the Role of Words). There have been two articles in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies on Rand's struggles with the implicit: Bryan Register, The universality and employment of concepts, JARS 1(2), Spring 2000, 211-244. and my article on Goals, values, and the implicit (see http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/goalsvalues.pdf). As for memory, there is no Objectivist theory about it, once you get past the limited capacity of working memory (the so-called "crow epistemology"), which plays a pivotal role in ITOE. And the "crow epistemology" was indirectly inspired by George Miller's work in the mid-1950s. It's not too surprising that there's no Objectivist theory, when you consider how little you can learn about the functioning of your own memory by doing introspection. If all you have to work with is introspection, your theory of memory will be about as good as Aristotle's was. Robert Campbell

Jenna, Let me start with some of the things that the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology does not address. You noted: Game theory was around when Rand was still intellectually active. Chaos theory was just getting started. Dynamic systems theories (for instance, the work in the volume edited by van Gelder and Port that you mentioned) and complexity theory have largely developed since Rand's death. All the same, it's too bad that Rand never took on dynamic systems theory or complexity theory. For if you really want to understand mental processes, you'll probably need them. Systems thinking is different, as Rand did plenty of it. (The classic analysis is Chris Sciabarra's, in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.) But Rand's systems thinking was focused on the political, the economic, the social, the ideological, and the cultural, and how the mentalities of individuals are related to all of them--it was not targeted on the mental functioning or development of individual human beings. For some items you might find interesting, see http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/pubspage.html particularly the essays on "Process and emergence: Normative function and representation" "The process dynamics of normative function" "Error dynamics: The dynamic emergence of error avoidance and error vicariants" "The emergence of contentful experience" Another one that might be worth looking at is http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/topologies1996.pdf which, among other things, gets into theories of analogical reasoning. (Of course, I have a vested interest in promoting it...) In future posts, I'll try to take on some of your specific objections to ITOE. In the meantime, could you say more the way you view the subject matter of ITOE? Besides not saying enough about perception, do you think that the book covers the right topics--or are important issues missing from it? Robert Campbell PS. Since Rand never wrote much about perception, and Leonard Peikoff, who developed her ideas to a fair extent, has left many of his in recorded lecture form, there's really just one Objectivist book on perception: The Evidence of the Senses, by David Kelley.

Angie, Here are the policies for the Harry Binswanger List: http://www.hblist.com/policies.htm See the HBL Loyalty Oath, under number 5. How do you judge it? Binswanger is a former member of Ayn Rand's Inner Circle and one of the founders of ARI, where he remains a senior figure. Robert Campbell

One of the essays Michael mentioned is this one, on Jean Piaget's developmental epistemology from an Objectivist point of view. You can see it here: http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/piaget.html I'm planning to revise it soon, to provide more explicit comparisons with Rand's theory of concepts, so comments from present company will be most helpful. Robert Campbell

Michael and Kat, Would it be possible to move the latter part of this thread to a new home under Epistemology? The topic has changed from Bertrand Russell, to Rand's treatment of him in ITOE (which is still an ethical issue), to the merits and demerits of ITOE (which are epistemological, primarily). Maybe copy Jenna W's "Re: Great Quote from Bertrand Russell" to the new thread, along with Rich Engel and Aaron's immediate responses, my two posts on the Value of ITOE and ITOE and OOP... Then let the Bertrand Russell thread end with Dragonfly's post, which is still focused on the argument from intimidation that Rand used against Russell, and move everything after that to the new thread. Robert Campbell

Aaron, Are you familiar with Adam Reed's article on "Object-oriented programming and Objectivist epistemology: Parallels and implications"? It ran in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Volume 4, number 2 (Spring 2003), pp. 251-284. Robert Campbell

Jenna, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology is worth reading in conjunction with articles and books on psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and so on. Don't let yourself be put off by the attitudes of those who have read only ITOE, and imagine that their mighty feat has given them a lifelong exemption from reading anything else in the vicinity. Robert Campbell

Dragonfly, There was a fair amount of discussion, back in the SOLOHQ days, of Rand's slam at Bertrand Russell in ITOE. See the thread on Rand's willingness to resort to the "argument from intimidation," starting here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralFo...um/0672.shtml#0 Several SOLOHQ participants made significant contributions to that discussion, including Peter Reidy, Merlin Jetton, Steve Shmurak, and Bill Dwyer. Robert Campbell

WSS, In answer to your first post on RoR, I haven't seen anything on Paul Ekman's research on emotion out in Rand-land. However, the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies published Marsha Enright's article on emotions in Fall 2002. And Steve Shmurak's article on Silvan S. Tomkins' theory of basic emotions (including an imaginary dialogue between Tomkins and Rand, and a CD-ROM of a young baby's emotional reactions) is due to appear in the next issue (Fall 2006). More proof, I suppose, that the "false friends of Objectivism" all flock to JARS. Robert Campbell

As Associate Editor of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, I need to correct a gross misstatement of fact that is presently being circulated at SOLOP (see http://www.solopassion.com/node/893#comment-7535). I am willing to cut the author of this comment some slack, as I would not expect her to know the details of JARS editorial policy. Here are the facts: The Abstract was written by Andrew Bernstein. The Biography was written by Andrew Bernstein. It was unusually long, but was run uncut. Andrew Bernstein signed a copyright letter for his article before it went to press. And Andrew Bernstein knew that his brief article would be listed in the Table of Contents. All JARS authors write their Abstracts and Biographies, sign copyright letters, and know that their work will be listed in the Table of Contents for the issue in which it appears. That's how we've been doing business, since Volume 1, Issue 1. Robert Campbell PS added in editing: A second poster to SOLOP (http://www.solopassion.com/node/893#comment-7544) has now picked up the same false statement and embroidered it:

Let me second that recommendation. Personal Destinies is a wonderful book. Tibor Machan has championed it (which is how I found out about it, years ago), but it's largely neglected today, even by philosophers who are sympathetic to eudaimonism. Norton also had a distinctive style that is rewarding to read. Don't hesitate to check it out. Robert Campbell

Ellen, Your historic reports have done a lot of good. You will be missed here. Robert