Philip Coates

> "psycho-epistemology"?...I wish I could think of a descriptive term that would be better. Does anyone have a suggestion? [barbara] To speak of a person's "psychology" is to speak of a total of which his method of mental functioning is only a part. It occured to me some years ago is that one way to take the curse out of the word is to pair it with what makes up the -rest- of a person's psychology: 1. Content. 2. Method. Just as one can divide many things up into content and method: for example a novelist's creation, a work of literature. In English class you can discuss the content of Atlas Shrugged: the story, the events, the characterization. And you can discuss the method: how did the author achieve it. In a person's psychology, one can discuss it's content: the ideas, the knowledge, the values he possesses. And the method. If *psycho-epistemology* is the term for the method or approach, the processes he repeatedly uses, then *psycho-metaphysics* is the content of his mind. [That's the term I came up with.] So a person's "psychology" = the content of his mind and the methods and processes of his mind = his psycho-metaphysics and his psycho-epistemology. The common sense term people use for psycho-epistemology is: how a person's mind works. [which the closest, Barbara, I think to a direct answer to your original question.... or you could just say "mental processes and approaches".] The common sense distinction is between how a person approaches things or how his mind works and what his mind -contains-. For example, how knowledgeable he is. What would be a word for someone who has a lot of good content (well-integrated) and a good psychoepistemology - he thinks well, is intelligent, doesn't lie to himself, has his emotions and his reason in balance, etc., etc.? I would reserve the word "wisdom" for that sort of person. Some dictionaries defines wisdom as "the trait of utilizing knowledge and experience with common sense and insight" or "ability to apply knowledge or experience or understanding or common sense and insight". Which might suggest, for example, a combination of years of experince and the ability to apply that experience. Good content. Good methods or "processing" (to use a more geeky or less common term, but one oists and intellectuals understand). Good psycho-metaphysics and good psycho-epistemology. I probably have more thoughts on this but it's nearly midnight on the west coast...bonsoir.

When to Use the Term Plagiarism Plagiarism involves a deliberate, willful attempt to fool people into believing you originated something when you did not. The standards for plagiarism are somewhat different in an informal discussion group or in conversation than in a book or a formal article where you have time to check over everything and are not just winging it, shooting from the hip, tired, etc. Sometimes you may be repeating something you learned almost verbatim while forgetting who you learned it from. That's how the subconscious works. The mind does not always footnote itself. Alternatively, sometimes Oists will repeat a point from Rand in almost the words Rand used and expect it not to be assumed that they originated it. Example: Mistakes of this magnitude are not made innocently. If I said this in a post or a conversation at a summer conference among Oists, I would expect readers or listeners to realize I was just reminding them of a well-known part of Oism, not to assume I was taking credit for originating it. I'm sure all of us have fallen into parotting something we learned from someone as something we know ourselves without fully grasping from where the words came. Or have been in conversations and bull sessions discussing Objectivism and not stopping to credit our sources or footnote ourselves before opening our mouths because we are not writing for publication. Some people are sloppier than others at this, need to be reminded about it a few times, etc. I haven't followed the Victor situation closely enough to be sure some of what I've said applies in this case, but the above principles need to be thought through quite carefully and context considered before using the very serious moral term "plagiarism". Like "sexual harassment" it is a term which definitely has an objective meaning. But also can be misapplied or a label slapped on too quickly without carefully examining the context.

I think I agree with Dragonfly, but would have to see if it's simple and clean. Sorry to be so intemperate in my last two posts...I had just spent a lot of time wrestling with the site and it had left bite marks on my neck... :-) I understand your point, Michael, about wrestling with software you didn't create... Phil

Jody one person's curmudgeon is another person's voice of reason and sanity.

In other words, to make it user-friendly and therefore user-frequented, you have to SCRAP or BURY those top several pages of category crap. Just show us the most recent posts...and maybe the first line of each like RoR does. That's it. ((( And remove a few buttons that no one knows how to use - like different reply and other buttons - first line: Delete, Edit, Quote, Reply; second row: Fast Replyt, Add Reply, New Topic, On, Card, PM, Report, Top; third row: (another) Add Reply, More Options (!!!), Close Fast Reply; fourth row: IPB Default Skin, English ))) ...this ain't the fuckin' Space Shuttle. Keep it Simple. This ain't wikipedia, either.

Here is the problem: The proper model for the front page of a discussion website is a newspaper website front page not the dewey decimal system or the library of congress categorization rubric. Go right now to Washington Post or CS Monitor or the NYT. If you go to the New York Times or any newspaper website, you see on the front page all the New Stuff, layed out. You know exactly what to click on. On OL you have to burrow down within about 20 different categories and posters don't necessarily stay within the too ponderous, too numerous, too general categories. I've stopped visiting this site regularly because I can waste fifteen minutes before I find something I want to read ...or a poster whose ideas I respect and like to follow. And then more minutes to find another. Consequently, I go to RoR or SP, even though the thinkers are often more lame than here because I can see **the most recent posts on every subject on the "front page"**. You -must- do that if you want people to visit your site. We don't have unlimited time and like to visit sites on a range of subjects besides Oism. Keep the "corners" and classification schem if you want but bury it. .... By the way it just took me several minutes trying to figure out which of the three different buttons that has the word "reply" in it would let me post this reply - which seems to have changed from a month ago. Keep it simple. Make it intuitive not geeky.

> 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. Hi Robert, To the extent they are making points that were not in the literature prior to him, I wonder if they have read him and are plagiarizing him or if his views are "in the air" and spread to third parties who don't realize they have been influenced by him. I also have similar questions in the field of academic philosophy re the revival of realism and pro-reason and Aristotelianism in the decades since Rand first started writing. Whether she had an influence and people are citing views very like hers but are not plagiarizing because they are unaware. Any thoughts? Phil

> Kat I met Phil Coates last week at the seminar and he is a marvelous upbeat person. Thanks, Michael! It was great meeting and spending some time with you and Kat as well. Great conference!! > The fact that he is an insatiable, high powered sexual dynamo is just icing on the cake. Did he look worn out? Rich, people at the conference couldn't figure out why I looked so tired. It has taken someone who was not even there to figure this immense mystery out.

Hi Gonzalo, Go to Atlasphere.com, click on Directory, and then on Browse By Location. You will find 21? fans of Ayn Rand's novels in Spain. You will probably have to join Atlasphere to contact them.

> Has anybody on OL had sex with Phil? [MSK] Ladies, don't answer Michael's question!! I'm swearing all twelve of you to silence. But you -may- post "oh, it was so good" if you want, or just the acronym OIWSG to be discreet.

my favorite movies Holiday Casablanca Rocky, Rocky III To Have and Have Not Ordinary People The Sound of Music The Scarlet Pimpernel (Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, Raymond Massie) Life is Beautiful An Office and a Gentleman (Lou Gossett Jr., Richard Gere) Courage Under Fire (Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan) Funny Girl Hello Dolly The Philadelphia Story Morning Glory (Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, etc.) Patton When Harry Met Sally You've Got Mail His Girl Friday To Sir With Love Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Mr. Smith Goes to Washington It's a Wonderful Life Davy Crockett Lady and the Tramp & all of the early Disney animated pictures Queen Christina Pride and Prejudice (Laurence Olivier, Greer Garson) The Nelson Affair (Olivier, Vivien Leigh) Breakfast at Tiffany's Superman Saving Private Ryan Pretty Woman Diamonds are Forever North by Northwest

I'm a "benevolent inventor". > Does anyone else have the impression I do -- that it's almost impossible, on this test, to receive a verdict that isn't complimentary? I doubt if anyone is told he's a lying scumbag! [barbara] You must be right because everyone knows I'm a flatulent overeater.

I agree that Chris and Boaz were better than the rest of the wolfpack. But that's not saying a great deal. It's like saying I saw a summer action movie aimed at thirteen year old minds which didn't totally suck. Even they didn't read or didn't fully address my original analysis. I made a lot of rebuttals with regard to each accusation which they as well as everyone else simply ignored. One example out of many of a point that everyone simply ignored: DMBH is new and doesn't know all the ARI scholars and can't say that they all deny having corresponded with Chris in the manner discussed.

Thanks everyone for the positive comments!! I am definitely tiring of the debate, though. I think I've made enough major points and repeated most of them for anyone capable of objectivity to begin to rethink their positions. In many ways it's not actually a full debate because, while I've addressed all of Diana's arguments in her essay, she and her supporters have not done so with me. I'll make ten points and they'll ignore eight ... and demagogue the other two. I'm grateful to Ellen and a couple of others who jumped in from time to time to help clearn up the Augean stables so I wasn't completely alone there. And I am truly *stunned* at how lame the Wolfpack's supposed rebuttals of me have been...these are supposed to be educated Objectivists, not middle school kids. Diana is supposed to be trying to get an advanced degree. (So many of them I just didn't want to have to stoop to answering and couldn't keep up: it was like constantly cleaning up after people who kept shooting at the urinal and missing.) Diana is far more verbally skilled than most of the Wolfpack but possessing not a drop more maturity, wisdom, or perspective. She is actually going to be -incredibly damaging- to Objectivism and will be dredged up repeatedly in the future by anyone writing a negative book about Objectivism. Damaging, not with regard to the *content* of any of her ideas, but with regard to her *methods*, her mean-spiritedness, her viciousness, her lack of benevolence, her exaggeration, her childish rages and thin-skinnedness. So as far as Gary thinking I was "having too much fun" to quit the debate, I'm not: It's too easy and too repetitious and too much like cleaning the toilet or teaching retards. The first gets to smell and the second to feel like driving with the emergency brake on after a while. I just posted something on my RoR "takedown" thread which summarizes the sort of fallacies I'm talking about...probably no point in reposting it here?, since OL people I'm sure read RoR. > not allow them to keep baiting him to stay and take more abuse. Roger, abuse and insult doesn't matter particularly and I pretty much shrug off. It's sort of like schoolyard taunting. Background noise which only makes the issuer look infantile: Name-calling is the last resort of he who has no argument.

> If you disagree well, disagree with talent, or disagree with a creative writing style, you will not be tolerated. Wait, a minute, Michael...none of those applies to me???? How come I'm being tolerated?!

> I too am a vegetarian. Does this mean that when I go to the summer seminar, I will become part of the menu for the cook-out??? [Fran] No. If you don't eat meat, you won't be tasty enough. I inquired with the staff and you're safe.

Kat, I'm trying to use a lot of heat and friction. The ball peen hammer option was rejected.

Well Roger stole my joke a few posts back. Which I told him. Not only that I have to morally condemn him because he willfully forgot to mention that the story was a true one and I had to be taken to the emergency room to be cured of frostbite..and denting.

Roger, two questions: How many people attended her lecture? -and- did anyone ask/did she explain why she believes benevolence is not a virtue...or did she just break it down into components - civility, generosity, etc. - and explain whey those separately would not be major virtues? A very different question.

> Ah, the joy of living far away, I can be cheeky and get away with it... [Fran] No you can't. :-)

I'm now asking for help for only the next couple days from anyone who has carefully read Diana's "dialectical dishonesty" essay and so won't misstate it (or overstate the way she does) and can post one or two logical points, but not call people names. Even one (or two) people who want to stand with me and -calmly- answer one or two sophistries or bits of illogic over the next day or two. And doesn't mind getting unfairly attacked. ("...or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating", Rudyard Kipling). See my post this afternoon on RoR under "Wrapping Up the Sciabarra Fight" for an explanation of what's needed and why I'm asking for help.

> Michael's request for this list sounds great to me too, if you can devote enough of your copious free time to making the list. Charles, I'm barely holding my head above water time-wise in the debate because it is often 8 against 1. And I sometimes feel I have to respond to a sophistry, but that takes me of course. When you're fighting multiple opponents, time is the big issue.

> the answers are voluminous (although without substance). This gives the impression that the issue is being discussed. It isn't, though. Michael, I have more confidence in people's intelligence. From the reads count there are sometimes about a hundred people who read the thread every few hours. I'm posting some questions which can't be clearly answered...and that goes into the public record on this issue which people can refer to in the future. The people who aren't posting are listening and my goal is not to convince the small core of seven who are debating me. Besides, misstatements would be made and repeated anyway. So how does having me puncture as many as I have time for hurt? Remember that the uncontested absurdity becomes the conventional wisdom. Would you rather have Diana be able to say "well, I made a detailed case against Chris and no one came to debate it or deny, which thye would have if I was wrong." Thats' what happened with Schwartz's Libertarianism. It became accepted because no one entered the arena to say that it was full of errors. I thought it would fall of its own weight so I didn't bother.

> but pay close attention to whether anyone actually cares when you deliver a rational argument. At some point, you have to draw the line I will try to do both, Charles. Often I've posted things which cause an angry furor in which my original point was missed, but I had a sense that the less vocal, less immediately responding people were thinking about it. So the -posted- uncomprehending or disagreeing by a very tiny minority may be only the surface effect. > Boring Old Fart of the Month Award. That one I actually got a laugh out of, Rich. And it was useful because I -was- repeating over and over and over my call for civility at that time*...and anyone who was going to "get it" probably already had. As for if someone personally attacks my motives or character, so what? *and I do tend to fart long and loud and in several languages so there was a flatulence of truth to the charge.