thomtg

Sometime ago in my local discussion group, we transcribed the final few audio minutes of Ayn Rand's review of J. H. Randall's book Aristotle at which she personally commented on Aristotle the philosopher himself, apart from the book, and specifically on "A is A." (Note: The statement is "A is A," not "A = A.") You can browse our transcription here.

David, I quoted you the entire e-mail message from Dr. Reisman. Presumably, the Google address is the snail-mail address. This real hassle is what makes the attempt to silence a renowned capitalist so sinister.

I received a private e-mail from Dr. George Reisman last night saying that his blog has been effectively locked. In an instant message several days earlier, I informed MSK about this, and he suspected foul play on the part of governmental supporters of the status quo. He offered some great suggestions, which I forwarded to Dr. Reisman, who has implemented at least one major piece of it, but it hasn't slowed down the imminent deletion of the entire blog archive within 15 days. Here is the private e-mail. Do what you will if you care to help.

Ginny, to paraphrase Barbara Branden (in the context of charity in a free society): If you want to do it, you will not be stopped.

To Roger's and Donovan's transcription, and to David's, I recall another reference to the same line, this time an attribution from Ayn Rand on the issue of responsibility: In the context of Rand's article, I have always taken the Branden quotation to its enthymematic conclusion: The means to any "how" about my goals, is I.

"The intellectuals are dead—long live the intellectuals!" That is the parting line in Ayn Rand's article "For the New Intellectual" in FTNI (1961, p. 57). She wishes to inspire the "new" intellectuals to transmit true ideas, to become the transmission belt from the ivory tower of philosophy to the man on the factory floor or in the office cubicle. I have always liked this rousing dedication to the future. It captures a double judgment. I see in this line Rand's great respect for knowledge, art, truth, and seekers of such things—all in the service of man's living on earth. She has great respect for knowledge of the past, history; for knowledge of existence and its relations to man, philosophy (PWNI 2); for knowledge of physical phenomena, physics (ITOE 35); for knowledge of standards and measurements, math (Ibid. 7); for art of identification, logic (FTNI "GS" 126). There is honor implied in the disciplines, in the trades. But Rand's line also shows great disdain for the purveyors of errors, vices, and falsehoods. These are the "old" intellectuals: the clueless logicians, the Platonic mathematicians, the transcendental physicists, the evil philosophers. They have caused, through their words and actions, loss and corruption to mankind's store of wisdom, which entails a degradation to the culture, contributing to the slow disintegration of society, down to the private lives of individual men. This is all true, and the disdain is rightly deserved. So, let us heed Rand's call, and make the proper, distinct judgments about any profession versus its professionals. Be the "new" professionals and assume the honorable responsibility of the profession. The world depends on us. The professionals are dead—long live the professionals!

But that is precisely my point: Most people in Ed's dumbed-down population (on account of his Point Two) don't integrate those things with which they inform themselves. They leave them as tidbits, snippets. They don't see the connection of one conversation thread to another. After all if they can't read well, which you agree is a consequence, then, according to Kendal Haven, whom you cited earlier, they can't do abstract thinking: activities such as differentiation, integration, inference, and so on. And as a further consequence of Ed's Point Two, you get the psycho-epistemological habits of inefficient thinking, which you name: remote-control habit, short attention-span habit, mental laziness, hijacked distraction for lack of the habit of mental purpose, and even the habit of social metaphysics to follow voyeuristically what others think and do. Thus, Ed's population has the very psycho-epistemological profile that finds Twitter perfectly entertaining.

Michael, your point integrates well with Ed Hudgins's Point 2 in another thread about the poor education we Americans are now getting on how to think. Ed's conclusion can very well apply to and may even explain the trend you highlight: Twitter's ubiquity can only exist with a deluded, dumbed-down population.

Roger, Why embrace Venn's interpretation of his very useful diagrams? Because the contrary doctrine is untenable. It is possible Venn's interpretation may be wrong, but I think not. I mean that "the King of France" is a descriptive phrase purported to name a single concrete, which in this case doesn't exist; and this phrase takes the subject position in the statement ascribing baldness to it. Ah, so let us suppose that dinosaurs, which are now extinct, were scaly, - "all dinosaurs are scaly" would be false, because none now presently exists. - "no dinosaur is scaly" would be true, because anything denied of nonpresence is fine. - "all unicorns are horned horses" would be false, because none now presently exists. - "no unicorn is a horned animal" would be true, because a denial of nonpresence is fine. - "The present King of France is bald" would be false, because none now presently exists. - "The present King of France isn't bald" would be true, ... BUT - "all dinosaurs were scaly" would be true; - "no dinosaur were scaly" would be false; - "all unicorns were horned horses" would be true; - "no unicorn was a horned animal" would be false; - "The present King of France was bald" would be true; - "The present King of France wasn't bald" would be false. All dinosaurs were scaly, but now they aren't? All unicorns were horned horses, but now they aren't? The present King of France was bald, but now he isn't? I think there is something wrong here with making verb tense a critical condition of predication. Of course a person's state of knowledge of reality must consider the state of existence of referents of the classes in the present and/or in the past, but the predication itself should express one's identification of reality as one finds it, right? If, on the other hand, what you meant to say is that existential import is a condition of having reference in the statement for any assertion, then I am all for it. But then this condition is not called existential import, as interpreted by anyone else that I know. A squared-circle is traditionally called a repugnant concept; as such, it has no place in any assertion. But in your conception of existential import, you would still judge statements about it as true or false. - "all squared-circles are triangular" would be false; - "no squared-circle is triangular" would be true; Even traditionalists would shy from judging these statementsk, and this has nothing to do with existential import. I am beginning to suspect that there may be some unclarity about the principle of bivalence. In my view, the statements about squared-circles are neither true nor false, because "squared-circle" doesn't mean anything. The same goes with "present King of France." So, in a sense, we have veered away from the issue of existential import to make judgments about our statements of repugnant concepts and nonexisting concretes. The issue of existential import, about which modernists attack against traditionalists, remains unexamined. I would go one step further, Roger, to say that there is such a thing as an elliptical statement, but what you are suggesting is not elliptical. The statement "John Smith is a lottery winner" is ambiguous, because there are many men with such a name. When a newspaper reports him as a winner, the statement is really elliptical to mean "John Aaron Smith of 123 Main Street, Sometown, Somestate, etc., is a lottery winner." It is still one simple assertion, asserting one individual having won the lottery. What you are suggesting is to make three or more separate assertions. That is not what ambiguity means. You want to assert two "is" and one compound "and" altogether; you want to assert that TpKOF is a real person, and that he is bald. The compound statement is not the same as the original statement. You are simply translating Russell's faulty theory of description to suit your proposal. On the other hand, I could be persuaded to go along with you if you had said that the original statement "The present King of France is bald" is enthymematic. But then I am unpersuaded, because in this case the argument with its implicit premises can't even get off the ground on account of earlier-cited problems. As I stated in my previous post, the core issue about existential import is the conflation of singular propositions with universal propositions.

Christopher, For the most part, any word that ends with the suffix "-ism" denotes an idea or set of ideas integrated into one unit. My original post makes the claim that since an idea is a cognitive product, it needs but cognitive actions to produce it conceptually. Moreover, only if the grasp of the idea is assented to be true does the person understanding some X'ism become an X'ist. And since cognitive actions are sufficient to understand and to be an idea's believer, existential actions on an accepted idea is a separate concern, albeit a moral one. Given the above summary, I would answer your Point 1 as follows: To be something cognitive entails a thought process and not an action process; but to be something moral entails an action process existentially. You want to be an Aristotelian? Seek to understand Aristotelianism, which, according to Rand, stands for the supremacy of reason (as opposed to mysticism or skepticism) in the acquisition of knowledge of reality. (ARA 148) You want to be an honorable man? Do honorable deeds in accordance with the moral code you acquired cognitively. In other words, you become a particular moral agent when you understand and assent to a code of morality, but you become moral (or immoral) when you act existentially. On your Point 2, I refer back to my original post to emphasize the importance of understanding "understanding" in order to understand anything. The understanding of Objectivism is merely a concrete example to showcase my claims. So, I would answer you affirmatively with respect to any system of ideas, philosophical or otherwise. If my analysis of "understanding" is correct, the real difficulty is in reaching true understanding. The cognitive actions involved in understanding anything require methods of inquiry and methods of verification. Firstly, oftentimes, people don't know what they believe, let alone discern what others claim. Their methods of inquiry, of belief-formation, are faulty, which cause them either to fail to extract the communicated thoughts from what they hear or read, or to fail to abstain from inventing thoughts they wish to have heard or read. Secondly, oftentimes, people claim to understand something quite well, but they don't, which become evident when they express their thoughts. Their methods of verification are faulty, which cause them either to fail to weed out nonsense and falsity, or to fail to assent crucial truths. Raising more emphasis to this difficulty, here is a quotation from David Kelley. I've quoted this often in my live discussion meetings, and I will probably bring it up from time to time on here: It is an astounding truism that an agreement or disagreement without understanding isn't worth a damn. And arguing for a misunderstanding is the stuff that straw men are made. Feel free to quote me on this snippet. :-) To reiterate, it is impossible to be in a state of understanding X'ism while not being an X'ist. I do think however that the converse is possible; it is plainly evident that there are people who claim themselves to be X'ists but who, upon speaking their thoughts, do not understand X'ism.

I have removed all the references to the psychological literature that support the various statements in this text. For those, see the original at www.objectivity-archive.com. I would anticipate that a concept of particulars as particulars will need to contrast them against not only abstractions over them respecting similarity groups in which they fall, but against abstractions over them respecting thematic relations in which they stand. Those relations would be proximity relations such as spatial and temporal relations, as well as part-whole relations. Stephen, what you call "thematic relations" is a useful idea to remember during the last phase of integrating the more abstract concepts, the phase of reduction, that is, to remember to follow these relations recursively to bedrock reality. More relevantly, I also agree that "abstraction" and "particular" may be regarded as coordinate concepts, as is the correlative pair "concept" and "concrete." But I take your point, in reply to Roger's, from a slightly different perspective. I gather from it the following: The present classification is mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive; the referents to one cannot be confused with those of the other, and the "standard epistemology" (as Roger calls it) is correct: We don't form concepts from single particulars, be they Ayn Rand, Mars, or a sheen of a car. Roger's effort to partition Ayn Rand the individual-particular into open-ended time slices so as to become units to be subsumed in the metaphorical "Ayn Rand" file folder, cannot work because the measurement of psychological time is the very quantitative relationship that is already abstracted and retained by the few known axiomatic concepts. (ITOE 56-57) Roger's theory would in effect explode the number of axiomatic concepts to correspond to every individual particular in existence. However, the issue that Roger is addressing is a legitimate one: how to deal with universals and particulars uniformly at the next level of cognition, namely, at the propositional level. When difficulties do arise at a more complex level, one should question the validity of its underlying levels. In the present case, the underlying level, the distinction between abstractness and concreteness, is bedrock epistemology. In which case, by modus tollens, one should identify and question the nature of the difficulty at the more complex level. And indeed, I think here is where Roger is mistaken. The question Roger asks, "Is there really such a concept as 'Existence'?" is a really good question, and I agree with his first answer: No. The universe, too, isn't a concept, and neither is Ayn Rand. But Roger wants to make them into concepts. Why? So he can deal with them uniformly in logical statements. This then is the core issue. Must logical statements, following traditional doctrinal logic, be regimented only into four neatly cornered forms? Given the evident validity of bedrock epistemology, it would have to be, no. By the Aristotelian guidelines of a what-logic, Roger certainly has valid reasons to be against the regnant relating-logic and to deprecate the Fregian-Russellian syntax of atomic and molecular statements. But a recourse to traditional scholastic/Port-Royal logic is just as mistaken. I am even tempted to call the attempt rationalism! (Sorry, Roger. I got hit with this label too from Will Thomas, so I empathize.) The key problem must be resolved at the propositional level, not to be retrofitted at the conceptual level, which is what Roger's proposal is about. David Kelley, presumably reading H. W. B. Joseph's, identified the same issue as follows: Subject terms and predicate terms serve different functions in a proposition. Traditional logicians, taking the rationalist interpretation of Aristotle's Prior Analytics, treat them identically, hence their theory of term distribution. Kelley carefully writes: Notice his distancing himself from traditionalists. The solution in my view is to return to the Aristotelian position before the traditionalist error, which aggravated the modernist reaction. Aristotle in P. A. names another method of inference, ekthesis [pdf], which relies on the setting up of a singular proposition as a mediated premise. The Objectivist logic, or any new science of logic, therefore needs to acknowledge the separate category of singular propositions from general propositions against traditionalists, but without agreeing with modernists about atomic and molecular facts being the ontological furniture of the world. It is on this new basis that I take the modernists' side on the issue of existential import in the other thread.

I agree that the medium does contribute, and perhaps induce, this scatter-brained form of mental activity: Twitter more so than emails, which in turn are more so than discussion fora, moderated lists, journals, and so on. But ultimately, it is the speaker or writer who is responsible for what gets said or written. Perhaps he follows his emotional winds to bring forth whatever in his subconscious, or not. Perhaps he speaks his mind regardless of whatever subject-topic has been said before by anyone else, or not. Or Perhaps he writes for the sake of taking his turn, filling the awkward silences, as it were; or not. It is a personal choice, one guided either by conscious intention or by unconscious habits. I too find this phenomenon of topic morphing by others to be amusing, but only to a certain extent. I make another judgment though. In the form of subquestions, I wonder whether there is any attempt on their part to correct the defect, or whether they actually revel in this psycho-epistemological "ability." I raise the point here because it is especially relevant for anyone who subscribes to this forum, whose motto I take seriously: "Dedicated to Ayn Rand and the Art of Living Consciously."

2. I wouldn't trust ~anything~ that Rand said extemporaneously to represent her considered opinion. A given statement might or might not be something she would agree with upon later, calm reflection. That is why her various Ford Hall Forum and other interview remarks must be digested only with a salt shaker close at hand. 3. In particular, I have always thought that what she said on facts in the epistemology workshop was unintegrable balderdash. (E.g., you can't contrast fact with error any more than you can contrast entity with hallucination. They are in different categories. "Fact" and "entity" are metaphysical concepts, while "error" and "hallucination" are epistemological concepts. Also, it is a ~fact~, an imaginary fact if you will, rather than a real fact, of the story "Cinderella" that she lost a slipper.) 4. Also, bear in mind that those comments were not edited and published until well after her death. Binswanger and Peikoff uncritically set forth Rand's extemporaneous comments as though they were part of Objectivism. Reader beware, I say. 5. By contrast, what she wrote in her letter to Hospers was clear, lucid, and makes perfect sense. "Truth" is an epistemological concept pertaining to the relationship between existence and consciousness, between an idea in one's mind and a fact of reality. "Fact" or "fact of reality" is a metaphysical concept referring to something's being what it is, even if no one knows it or recognizes it. REB Roger, I accept your Point 4. But I place more weight to what Ayn Rand wrote or said later than earlier. The letter to John Hospers was written in 1961; the workshop was recorded in 1969-1971. Rand had had more time to reflect on her own writings by then. So, I would place more weight in her oral statement that facts are "an epistemological convenience." (ITOE 241) On this view, Rand would have emended her 1961 letter to Hospers. On the basis of the excerpt of the Hospers-letter and of ITOE 241-243, I would suggest that one way to emend it is as follows:

Roger, On Point 1, I am taking John Venn's interpretation literally. Check out DK's Venn diagrams for the four classical propositional forms. As for "The King of France is/isn't bald," we are dealing here not with a class but with a concrete. In this case the subject is a description of a nonexistent concrete. The central issue in Points 2 and 3 concerns the separation of singular propositions and general propositions (universal and particular). Traditionalists lump singulars together with universal propositions. This package deal is what generates the issue of existential import. I would suggest that, given the Objectivist epistemology as the base, logical statements should be taught as having six propositional forms (instead of just the classical four). The extra two take concretes for subjects. U: x is P -- Y: x isn't P. U-statements and Y-statements require the existence of x as part of their truth conditions. If x does not exist, then both "x is P" and "x isn't P" are meaningless and are neither true nor false.

Is it possible to understand Objectivism and not be an Objectivist? I think not. The key word in understanding my above claim is in understanding what "understanding" is. "Understanding" is a comprehensive grasp of an aspect of reality by means of a concept. In this case, the "aspect of reality" is a particular philosophy, i.e., a body of thought pertaining to existence and man's relationship to it, i.e., an integrated conglomeration of mental identifications of external contents. This "grasping" is analogous to the holding of a book. But unlike holding a book, say, a book on Objectivism, which you can release your hold and put it down; the grasping is a permanent grab. The grasping produces products in the mind: concepts. In holding a book, there is a direct correspondence between the action and the object acted on, i.e., between the holding itself and the book held. But there isn't a "correspondence" in understanding something. Of course, you need something to grasp, some aspect of reality in order to understand; but once you have grasped it, what you understood becomes part of your permanent possession; you can't "put it down"; you go to sleep, wake up, think about it, and there it is again as an awareness, an understanding of that aspect of reality, even if you are presently not in any sensory contact with that aspect of reality. Having permanent possession of a concept is a huge undertaking, especially if it is "Objectivism," which comprises hundreds if not thousands of analyzable concepts, which require tracing and reducing to handfuls of unanalyzable axiomatic concepts in one direction, interrelating all into one single integration in the other direction, and doing so without errors: innocent mistakes, evasive gaps, missing links, extraneous contents. It is easy to imagine people giving up the effort to acquire this level of understanding. It is easy also to imagine them failing to sustain the effort toward the purpose of understanding. One may now ask, but is it necessary that understanding Objectivism makes one an Objectivist? Doesn't it require an act of free will? Yes, it does. It does require an assent that Objectivism is true. And if it is true, i.e., of recognizing it as facts of reality, then there can be no gap between grasping it as true and being an Objectivist. Let me explain. There are two processes going on here. The first one is the process of forming a belief, and the second process is that of verifying it. For volitionally rational beings, we need to discover and use logical methods of inquiry for the former and logical methods of verification for the latter. (See DK "Religion and Objectivism.") If I see this dog here sitting on a mat, and then I make the perceptual judgment, "The dog is on the mat"; I have assented to a fact of concrete reality. The act of seeing verifies the belief. The belief is assented as a self-evident truth, i.e., its truth is evident by my seeing, a truth whose evidence is given by the mere perception of it. There can be no question then that the seeing and judging altogether makes me a believer. It would be oxymoronic to question me on a witness stand whether I saw the dog and whether it was on the mat, and then--having both questions answered affirmatively by me--to wonder independently whether I believe the dog was on the mat. At the perceptual level, perceptual judgments can be verified perceptually immediately. Above this level, however, the more abstract judgments may not have this immediate linkage of verification. The belief, as a product of the judgment, may langish, may be tossed around in the mind, may be entertained, all without ever being assented as true or false. Or it could be assented, but assented as imaginary not as a fact of reality. Just read any fiction, a book of fantasy or of science fiction, for example. And let us suppose that it is written in English. When you read a sentence in that book, you convert what some author had judged in her mind into a belief in your mind. You don't assent that it is true of reality. For the sake of continuing in the reading, you assent instead to grant it as virtually true in your imagination. With each new sentence you read, you integrate a new belief as best as you can (without errors, etc.) If the story is a good one, your integrations stay together coherently. If it is a poorly crafted story, if the premises are implausible, even when you grant them every poetic, scientific license; then your integration doesn't hold together. In either case, because you know the story is fictional, you don't bother to evoke your logical methods of verification with respect to reality. By contrast, in the case of Objectivism, the nonfiction books, beginning with For the New Intellectual, purport to be about reality, i.e., to be true with respect to reality by its author. So, every sentence if it is to be understood and integrated by the rational reader, requires on his part proper belief-formation and proper verification. And, assuming that someone has grasped Objectivism correctly, there can be no gap between understanding it and being its believer. I can see two objections against the above paragraph. Objectivism may not be true. The integrator may suspend judgment for lack of evidence. The first objection is that perhaps Objectivism at its roots and trunk is false. But so what? Anything can be said to be false. Where is the evidence or proof? If something is false, say, "2 + 2 = 5"; its falsity can be detected during verification and integration with the rest of one's knowledge. One's responsibility remains the same: form the belief correctly, and verify the belief correctly. And if anything is found false, it is not believed. Alternatively, the objection may amount to a demand or an assurance ahead of time that something must be known true prior to actually knowing it. This is a demand for transhuman knowledge, for the answers from the back of the textbook, before attempting to find some. The reality is such that there can be no such back-of-the-book assurance. And even if one gets the assurance without the doing, what one gets is not knowledge. If someone gives you an answer to a test question, and if you plug that answer in the test, you may get a good grade from it, but you still don't know it. What you have is right opinion, i.e., someone else's opinion that happens to be true. Knowledge is always a first-hand personal achievement. Now let's examine the second objection. Suppose someone who studies Objectivism encounters, say, the sentence "Axiomatic concepts are the constants of man's consciousness, the cognitive integrators that identify and thus protect its continuity." (ITOE 56) If he does not understand the sentence, if the words in the sentence don't integrate into a single thought, then the integration of the sentence into the body of thought that is being formed about Objectivism stops. Any subsequent sentence that depends on this sentence cannot be properly processed. The integration of the entire section or chapter dependent on this sentence stops. It's like a big "game pause" for this branch of Objectivism. There may be many branches of Objectivism being paused this way. But this is as it should be. This is the proper way of understanding Objectivism or anything abstract. The improper way is to skip the sentence, to continue reading without understanding, without grasping the relevant fact, and then to make the misintegration, to incorporate errors into the body of thought. So the issue of lacking evidence for integration of a piece of Objectivism is not an insuperable impediment. One keeps at it. Once the evidence for understanding some piece is found, the overall integration resumes. Thus, if Objectivism is true, which I think it is, and if anyone understands it, ergo he is an Objectivist. There may be a separate objection to this claim. Mustn't an Objectivist be someone who not only understands Objectivism but also acts on that understanding? This is akin to the point that you can't eulogize a man now dead as a brave man if while alive he knew of bravery but never had the opportunity to go to battle to exhibit it? I agree with this, but only partly due to the context. Objectivism as a systematic philosophy is an intellectual good, not a moral good. To achieve this good, one has to do intellectual work, and this is sufficient. The work to be done is in the mental grasping, which requires persistence, courage, and many other virtues. That Objectivism is a philosophy for living on earth is an element in the philosophy. But applying the philosophy to one's own life is a separate issue from understanding it. A person's life, if he values it, is his moral good. When a person applies a philosophy to live, he can be judged morally. Ayn Rand was an Objectivist, and she applied and practiced the philosophy in her life with integrity. Alan Greenspan is an Objectivist, but he sold out his Objectivist principles. So, being intellectually an Objectivist is one thing, and having moral integrity or hypocrisy regarding it is another. Therefore, it is impossible to be in a state of understanding Objectivism while not being an Objectivist. I do think however that the converse is possible; it is plainly evident that there are people who claim themselves to be Objectivists but who, upon speaking their thoughts, do not understand Objectivism.

Hello, My name is Thom Pham, and I am an Objectivist. I did not read anything by Ayn Rand or even heard of her or the subcultural movement she started until near the end of my college education when, while on a student-exchange program in French-speaking Switzerland, a friend visited me and handed me a battered copy of The Fountainhead. She had gotten it from a fellow exchange student while in Finland, and who knows where that guy got it from. But it arrived in my hands as my friend departed on a train. I'll always remember Corinne Ruty as the girl who introduced me to Ayn Rand's ideas, although I resisted the introduction at first. Corinne gave me the book because she said that I reminded her of some characters in the book. Standing on the steps of the train, her parting comment to me was, "There's something innocent about you." Now, for a twenty-one-year-old guy, that is just not cool. No matter the interpretation, no young man wants to be known as "innocent." Partly for that reason I did not care to read the book immediately. For another reason, the book was published in 1943. That's old. I was into science fiction and things high-tech. Except for studying French, all of my education was in the natural sciences, not in the humanities and social sciences. I did not care for mundane literature. It was not until several months later near the end of my traineeship that I decided to read the book. Knowing that Corinne was soon going to quiz me about it, I took up the chore of reading it. When I did read the book, looking back, I was very surprised that my sense of life was affirmed. I was shocked that someone had found the words to name what I had felt about the world. With those words, a new world lit up for me. The world was the same, but it was as if I was seeing it from a new perspective. There is no need to describe to you the practical impact of Rand's ideas. It suffices to say that I couldn't wait to read everything else by Rand. After I returned to the University of Tennessee, I read all of Ayn Rand's fictional works. I browsed through the essays from the bound collections of the Objectivist letters, which were found in the library. I caught up with the history of the subcultural movement. I date my calling myself an Objectivist on the evening I read "What Is Capitalism?" Before this, and having informed myself of the way the subcultural movement developed and devolved, I only called myself an Ayn Rand enthusiast. But when I understood the objective theory of values, why only capitalism was the proper social system for rational beings, and why only the Objectivist ethics could properly defend capitalism, when all the pieces fit together, there was this quiet realization that against a mountain of misinformation I learned a high truth. Crediting the Objectivist ideas for this personal achievement, I called myself an Objectivist from then on. I now have several copies of The Fountainhead. I have several boxes, each with 24 copies, of Atlas Shrugged to give out to new people I meet. I organize my own biweekly study group to study Objectivism in more depth. As for the original battered book, I gave it to my sister.

Lectures 1 and 2 of BB POET mentioned that this is a problem of inefficient thinking in controlling subconscious thoughts--i.e., of not having a cognitive purpose, not maintaining specificity, not asking subquestions. So what comes up and gets typewritten is the associative stream-of-consciousness style of writing, which may be cute for younger, less experienced writers, but not so for adults. Whenever you see this in others, Bill, know that it came from decades of unconscious habits of inefficiency.

I used to think as you, Bill (Go Vols!), until recently. This past March, Ron Paul answered the very question you raised about budget appropriations. I linked it here. Essentially, Dr. Paul sticks to the Constitutional principle that it is the role of Congress to control the budget, that it should leave no room for discretionary spending to the Executive branch, none. Therefore, the budget should be 100% earmarked.

Thailand is another case study for applying Ayn Rand's advice about the roots of war. As explained in her article "The Roots of War" (CTUI 35-43), most men have never rejected the doctrine of fistism, the doctrine "that force is a proper or unavoidable part of human existence and human societies." Until the Thai people reject it, they will continue to "stumble" on. Given your report however, I do not see any intellectual leadership that will get that message out to the "yellow" and "red" shirts.

Quick, somebody in the comic books industry, make Steve Ditko an editor, an authority, to re-right super heroes in comic books! The article "Toyland"--once you let pass the awkward writing style--is a refreshing analysis of what is philosophically wrong with the American comic books industry. It affirms and gives voice to my decision long ago to stop buying and reading super-heroes comic books. My reasoning at the time was that it was as if all my favorite super heroes "jumped the shark." Well, Steve Ditko has a much better explanation, and it is an Objectivist one. I like the way he introduces the readers to such notions as "standard of value"; values as either "intrinsic, subjective, or objective"; the distinction of the natural vs. the man-made; anti-concepts "the public," "the right to know," and the anti-hero "hero"; the philosophy of education, mentioning Montessori's teaching methods; the laws of identity, noncontradiction, excluded middle; free will and responsibility, versus determinism and passive wishing; and the primacy of existence. This is pretty substantial. One thing I don't get fully is the inclusion of the two artworks. It is not clear to me what are the two contradictory "operating principles" that caused Mr. Laszlo Toth to strike his hammer.

The key word is "chosen". For indeed, standards of value always imply that these standards have to be chosen, and a 'choice' is always subjective. Another key element: for herself. It was her personally chosen standards. It doesn't matter whether she called her philosophy Objectivism - the standards of value she selected for herself were her personal choice. [...] Xray, a choice, the action per se, is always made by some chooser (in the same way a valuation is always made by some valuer). So from the chooser's perspective, it is a personal, subjective choice. There is no dispute about this as a psychological aspect of the action. What is in dispute is whether the thing chosen--be it a standard, a value, an activity--is chosen objectively, or subjectively, or intrinsically, by means of that personal, subjective choice as a moral aspect of the action. In the history of philosophy, Objectivism stands alone in reasoning that the thing chosen can be objective. (For a justification of the objectivity of values, see my elaboration to Anonrobt's point in my Post #38.) Who does the categorizing from which I then choose? [...] The responsibility is always on the chooser to discover and organize his knowledge. Since knowledge does not grow like trees in nature, it has to be discovered directly from nature or learned indirectly from original discoverers. And categories of standards do count as organizations of knowledge. In the two cases so far discussed, there is a category of standards of measurement for the purpose of measuring lengths, and there is a category of standards of teleological measurement for the purpose of measuring values. Thus, there are many standards floating around per category of measurement. Not so long ago, there weren't that many, or even none, and some were unstable. The foot and the yard, allegedly, were re-standardized with each reigning king per geographic region. Nevertheless, the responsibility ultimately rests on the measurer, on the individual human being. Anything he does cognitively requires a standard of measurement. Some are better, some worse (again, by yet a more fundamental standard); and if there is none, he has to discover one. Two quotations from Ayn Rand may help in this context: If mankind did not have an Ayn Rand or an Aristotle, or even a Kant or a Plato, every individual would still need to discover for himself various standards of measurement in epistemology, ethics, politics, esthetics. That they existed, that they made their discoveries, helped the rest of mankind. But still, in any purpose requiring measurement, a standard must be chosen; and for each man, this responsibility is inescapable. So per Rand, the "second-handers" don't do the litmus test on what is being served to them, since the "WHO" says something is [sic] more important to them than WHAT is being said? [...] Yes, I would agree to this interpretation. Another variable to be considered in that context: N. Branden himself may have acted as a "second-hander" here, mirroring Rand's own disapproval of the way the beatniks danced. I would approach the subject by asking Branden to elaborate on his chosen "standard of mental health" and then ask him to explain why he thinks dancing like that is detrimental to it. Maybe. I am willing to consider whether NB acted second-handedly, but where is your reasoning, where is your evidence, as exhibited in the Branden article? Have you identified the proffered standard of mental health? Have you assented to it as an absolute, at least for the duration of analysis? These are preliminary questions I would have to answer before I make a judgment about NB's cognitive style in the present episode. But regarding the judgment about the dancing of the beatniks, I am in agreement with your approach on the subject. And if I am not mistaken, Branden elaborates on two standards of mental health fifteen paragraphs into the cited article, taking up four paragraphs, beginning with "A rational, self-...," and ending with "... escape from reality" (p. 74). Of the two standards, he chooses the first in judging the dancing of the beatniks. Finally, how well anyone makes a judgment also depends on his adherence to the standard of objectivity, and on whether an error of judgment can be made. And concerning the issue of "scope," a suggestion made by MSK in Post #55, I recently posted something here.

So it was Ayn Rand who chose the objectivist standard of values, and once chosen, it is regarded as an invariant absolute? [...] I'd like to discuss those objective quality standards. For example, Nathaniel Branden writes in his essay "The Psychology of Pleasure" (1964, in the The Virtue of Selfihsness, pb, p. 71-78)), about the pleasures appropriate or inappropriate for the "rational, psychologically healthy man". So everyone who danced like that got the thumbs down from Rand and Branden because they "know" it is no "authenic enjoyment" and these people are purposeless, mindless, senseless? [...] Xray, to be clearer, I could have written more concretely, "We can choose whichever standard of length to use for measurement purposes. But once it is chosen, that is an invariant absolute." If you want to measure pieces of lumber to build a bench, then choose your standard of length and start measuring; but don't switch standard in mid-activity and confuse yourself. That is what is meant by retaining a standard as an invariant absolute. Similarly, for purposes of choosing and ranking values to live one's life, a chosen standard of value is an invariant absolute. Now, you asked the follow-up question: "So it was Ayn Rand who chose the Objectivist standard of values, and once chosen, it is regarded as an invariant absolute?" My short answer is: Yes, for herself. My long answer is the rest. Read on. In both the above cases, who does the choosing of the enumerated categories of standards? Anyone, really. It is you for your bench, if you want to make one; it is you for your life, if you want to live. And your choice depends on the standard of epistemology, as MSK alluded in Post #33. More specifically, it depends on your chosen standard of psycho-epistemology--your manner of processing cognitively from the aspect of the interaction between your mind and the rest of your faculty of consciousness. Ayn Rand discovered and elaborated on two such standards. There is the standard of the second-hander psycho-epistemology. There is also the standard of the first-hander psycho-epistemology. For short, let us call these long-naming standards by the synonym of cognitive styles. When a person 1) observes something, 2) makes a judgment on it, based on some standard of evaluation, and then subsequently 3) reports to you about it; what do you do cognitively about the report? If your chosen cognitive style is of a second-hander, you zero in exclusively on the person doing the observing, judging, and reporting; you evaluate his social standing, his notoriety, his political pull; and then you take whatever he reports as your own judgment--regardless of any actual personal observation and/or any actual personal judgment from observation (based on some standard). On the other hand, if you adopt the first-hander cognitive style, you do consider the reporter's credibility as part of the larger context, of course, but more importantly, you take the report as an invitation to do the observing yourself, if feasible, and to make the judgment yourself, if you adopt the same standard; and once having made your own independent judgment, you evaluate the reported judgment against your own before accepting or rejecting it. Nathaniel Branden observed the beatniks dancing, judged their activities on a standard of mental health, and wrote about it. What to do cognitively? I would argue that some second-handers will accept NB's judgment wholly, uncritically. Some other second-handers, following other figures of authority, of different social standings, etc., will reject NB's judgment wholly, uncritically. By contrast, the independent first-hander, I would argue, will read the report and decide to accept or reject the proffered standard of mental health on its own logical merit. If he rejects the standard, the entire report is dismissed. If he finds the standard plausible, he goes on to observe first-hand the dancing of beatniks, and then to judge their activities in accordance to the standard. Only then will he make the secondary judgment about NB's judgment of the dancing of the beatniks. Generally speaking, the individual who takes up the cognitive style of the first-hander will place no one else's judgments of reality above his own, not even those of Branden or of Rand. This is the meaning and the standard, as taught by Ayn Rand. (But don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself, if you choose.) If a person understands something first hand, he understands the reasoning and the evidence for it--down to the level of perceptual observation. By contrast, if a person does not take the first-hand approach to cognition, then he takes the thing taught as dogma, without any understanding. Though Rand has taught (and provided reasoning) that one should never take anything dogmatically, the fact that others have taken her teachings as dogmas or have piled on to condemn her as being dogmatic, merely illustrates that there are more than one standard of psycho-epistemology at work in the minds of men. In the realm of psycho-epistemology, Rand illustrates two standards of cognition in her novel The Fountainhead. She chose for herself in her own life the cognitive style of the first-hander. No one else has to follow her example because of her social standing, notoriety, or influence. Similarly, in the realm of ethics, Rand illustrates two standards of living one's life in her novel Atlas Shrugged. She chose for herself the Objectivist standard of life qua man for the purpose of identifying her own hierarchy of values so as to live her own life. No one else has to follow her example. Each and every one of these decisions that a person makes for himself depends on his psycho-epistemology.

This is an insightful story, Barbara. "Forgiveness" is a topic I've often wondered about, particularly as it relates to justice and mercy. Too bad your post is nested in the humor section of the forum and will not get the readership it deserves.

Xray, in discussing Objectivist ethics, a certain precision in terminology may be helpful. Ayn Rand makes the distinction between a standard of values and a hierarchy of values. Take the following analogy. The length of the meter is a standard unit of length; so is the length of the foot. We can choose whichever standard to use for a discussion. But once it is chosen, that is an invariant absolute. Contrasting the standard unit of, say, the foot, there is your foot and its length, and there is my foot and its length. Your foot has a certain specific length, as measured by the standard foot, which may differ from the specific length of my foot. Yours may be under a foot; mine may be a little over a foot. Now consider the standards of values in the Objectivist ethics. Ethicists define many standards of values on the basis of reality. Rand distinguishes two standards: standard of values befitting a man's life, and standard of values befitting the life of a brute. Objectivists take ethics to be about discovering the proper methods of living one's life (ITOE 36), with life qua rational man being the standard. (Tradional moralists tend to adopt the life of the brute as the standard in their prescriptions of what people ought to do.) Now, within the context of a standard of values, each individual has his own hierarchy of values. Your lover and your career, which are different from my lover and my career, are at different placements in your hierarchy, as the respective placements are different in mine. This distinction between standard and hierarchy makes possible the judgment that a person's hierarchy of values may be more or less correct, relative to the standard of values. For example, if a standard calls for man to take reason as his only absolute; then if a particular man's hierarchy places reason as a mere backup to faith, then his hierarchy of values is inappropriate by that standard. Christopher, I would agree to your formulation only if it is qualified to include his already knowing what's what. Sacrifice is an act that presumes a prior knowledge of a hierarchy of values. Suppose, right or wrong, a mother values her baby higher than a bunny rabbit. Then, when while driving in a car with her infant, she veers off the road suddenly in order to avoid colliding a crossing bunny at the cost of crashing the vehicle and killing the baby, she is in effect surrendering a higher value, the baby, in exchange for a lower value, the rabbit. Relative to her particular hierarchy of values, she has made a sacrifice. Of course, relative to an environmentalist of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (Cf., Ed Hudgins's "Light Up the World for Humans"), the mother's action would not be a sacrifice. (On this point, I agree with Merlin's Post #30.) More generally, from an altruist's perspective, the interests of others are placed high on his hierarchy of values, higher than his own personal interests. His acting for the benefit of others is not seen by him as a sacrifice; but as seen by and translated to any egoist's own hierarchy, an altruist's every action is an act of self-sacrifice. Right or wrong, sacrifice, then, is a judgment in the context of some hierarchy of values. Relative to oneself, it is the effect of reneging on one's established hierarchy. (In this context, Christopher, I repudiate entirely your assessment of altruism in your Post #1.) Applied ethics, or moral living, has three phases: choosing the correct standard, choosing and ranking values, and pursuing values. The most difficult phase is the last. Ayn Rand writes about the first two phases: " 'That which is required for the survival of man qua man' is an abstract principle [a standard] that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose--the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being--belongs to every individual man [a hierarchy], and the life he has to live is his own." (TVOS 27) It is in the third phase that volitional beings need to acquire rational virtues in order to avoid acting sacrificially. In particular, Rand advises that egoists cultivate the virtue of integrity in order to avoid valuing one way but acting another. (TVOS 28) For the same reason, a living altruist cannot help but be a hypocrite. Robert, I agree with your conception of values. My elaboration of the criteria of values is posted here.

Speaking as a frontlineman, changing others' minds about this issue is really, really tough, Ed. I see you have a tough time yourself persuading even the denizens on here. It demonstrates how difficult the task is merely to present the problem to any audience. How disappointing that not many have understood you! Though your success rate is low, your tactics are admirable.