Starbuckle

Shayne wrote: "If Harriman/Peikoff personally love the subject, then more power to them, they should go ahead and enjoy themselves. But that isn't what they did. They used ARI funds, and worse, they in some manner use Rand's name and authority to back the book, and they've undermined ARI's mission." I would say that the denouement ended up undermining the mission, or ARI's characteristic modus operandi ended up undermining its mission (if we assume that the authoritarian m.o. is not an inextirpable ingredient of the mission). But I don't know how it can be argued that the project per se of exploring the implications of Rand's (or Rand-influenced) epistemology for scientific work can be regarded as inconsistent with the mission. The worthiness of pursuing such a project for those interested in the spread, development and extension of Rand's ideas is a separate question from that of whether the book achieves its goals. ARI never constituted or represented itself as a narrowly political organization, just as Rand never focused solely on political questions but was concerned to deal with more fundamental philosophical questions. I doubt that anybody contributing major funds to ARI is upset that Peikoff pursued an epistemological inquiry through the collaboration on a book about how scientific work has been conducted, just as I doubt that subscribers to The Objectivist were confounded when suddenly confronted with a lengthy series of articles elaborating Rand's understanding of how valid concepts are formulated. ARI donors certainly should be VERY concerned over the lunatic, goonish way Peikoff has responded to civil criticism of the book. In your post you seem to be suggesting that any funded project involving a sustained non-political focus, not merely any irrationally dogmatic non-political focus, is wasteful on ARI's part, or destructively distracting from necessary political efforts to defend against attacks on liberty.

I said "The battle for liberty is unending. One can't put one's life and interests on indefinite hold until it's 'safe' to resume them." Shayne said: "That is of course not what I meant and is a silly interpretation. If I take your interpretation literally we all starve to death." I apologize if I misunderstood what you were saying. The passage I responded to incorporated many separate claims, so I'll pick one that seemed to me wrongheaded as stated. What did you mean when you decried "years and years of effort writing a controversial book on physics," for example?

This and that: 1. Robert Campbell, can you elaborate your disagreements with Peikoff in your List of Four? I am acquainted only with some of your views about Peikoff's use of the word "arbitary." For example, what is your dispute with "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy"? With regard to the dispute over arbitrariness, this I don't get: "And because arbitrary assertions are neither true nor false, Peikoff's assertion about the Incompleteness Theorem would consequently lack a truth value. "Whereas a metamathematician asserting that the Incompleteness Theorem pertains only to proofs with a finite number of steps would assert it non-arbitrarily. "And the same proposition as asserted by the metamathematician would be true. "Peikovian epistemology is necessarily inconsistent with the correspondence theory of truth." If Peikoff doesn't know what he's referring to when he uses the term "Incompleteness Theorem," what is he referring to? Obviously, not the theorem; his conception of it isn't validly formed. It's thus not the same referent as the metamath guy's referent, let alone the originator of the theorem's referent, is it? How then can a contention (by, let's say, a meta-Peikoff) that Peikoff's characterization of the theorem carries no cognitive weight be "inconsistent with the correspondence theory of truth"? Later in the thread you write: "If Peikoff says, 'Gödel's Incompleteness theorem pertains only to proofs with a finite number of steps,' his gross ignorance of the theorem and its context doesn't prevent his statement from denoting anything." But what does it denote? Surely not the theorem, if he doesn't know what the theorem is? Suppose for many years I mistakenly believe that a chandelier is a kind of candle. When I say the word "chandelier" the referent is a burning wax stick, not an electrically-powered light hanging from the ceiling. When I talk about chandeliers, am I talking about what other people talk about when they talk about chandeliers? Suppose in a discussion I believe that the Dark Hole everybody is talking about is a patch of space from which no light can escape; but everyone else in the room is actually referring to a club named Dark Hole. They say, "Dark Hole closes at nine." I say, "What are you talking about? Dark Hole never 'closes'; or else, in a manner of speaking, it is always closed. It performs its function of sucking everything in continuously." Is what I have just said either a false statement about the club OR a true statement about the club? It is not even about the club at all. I wouldn't say it's "arbitrary," just mistaken and off-point, since I didn't pick up on what the conversation was about. But what's in my mind is not corresponding/referring to what the other people are talking about. I haven't read Peikoff closely enough, recently enough to say what my exact take on his own statements about arbitrariness would be, except that I would say he is being arbitrary when he claims that anything Barbara Branden reports about Rand's life is "arbitrary." Peikoff has very often abused concepts and insights that were reasonable enough as originally formulated, or at least not patently silly even if debatable. 2. GHS said: "Many years ago, after some particularly obnoxious Harvard Law School students had attended an IHS seminar, I asked fellow teacher Randy Barnett, "Do you have to be an asshole to get into Harvard Law School, or does it turn you into one?" "Randy, himself a Harvard Law School graduate, replied, 'Half and half.' " Yes, many developments, including psychological ones, are reciprocal and dialectical.

"I don't say that we shouldn't debate and expand on physics, art, or epistemology, but liberty is the fundamental that makes these things possible. Observe the spectacle that ARI is putting on for us: years and years of effort writing a controversial book on physics, countless Objectivists worried about the future of the movement, spending countless hours debating various sides of a book on physics, while just outside the door, Obama is starting push legislation to censor and regulate the one last realm where we almost have complete liberty of expression, the Internet." The post started out well, but I get lost here. The poster suggests that something is wrong with "writing a controversial book on physics" or "debating...a book on physics [and induction]" in light of the fact that Obama is out there wreaking his havoc (which he wasn't, presumably, when the book was started), but "I don't say that we shouldn't debate and expand on physics, art, or epistemology...."? The dogmatism of the organized Objectivist movement in its various forms is wrongheaded. But Rand is right that culture and deeper ideas shape politics. And I wouldn't say that pro-freedom scientists and scholars should drop their careers and just attend Tea Party rallies and write op-eds until we're safely rid of Obama. We'll never be safely rid of him, even after he's gone. The battle for liberty is unending. One can't put one's life and interests on indefinite hold until it's "safe" to resume them. Another poster observes in response to a post of mine that Tracinski was four-square in favor of Peikoff and against Kelley vis-a-vis the 1989 blow-up. Yes. That's what I was alluding to. In his present essay, Tracinski distances himself from how he argued and conducted himself back then, but only very indirectly. I agree that he should be more up-front about that history now and in particular that he should admit that he was unjust to Kelley regardless of any disagreements he may have with the IOS/TOC approach to things. Still, Tracinski's just-published essay is mostly true and certainly important. There shouldn't be any organized Objectivist movement, with its yes men and dictators. Peikoff has done everybody a favor by being so especially blatant in his latest bout of irrational chest-thumping, but, contra Tracinksi-back-then, it's not as if the authoritarian pathology of the organized Objectivist movement wasn't evident in the wake of 1989, 1995, etc. Plenty of intelligent people took the trouble to spell it all out, and in the age of the Internet anybody who wanted to peruse their arguments could easily have done so.

"I was waiting for someone to step up to the plate and provide an "out" for Orthodox Objectivists. 'Independent' Objectivism: No major premises checked, no major history or past decisions questioned, just a few tweaks here and there. All nice and tidy. A work of art really. Brilliantly played." Is this intended to be a comment on Tracinski's piece? I fault it for its faint praise or non-praise of Kelley for raising these issues at length 20 years ago, which should be credited despite any complaints about IOS policies in the aftermath. I don't recall Tracinski's recognizing the problem of dogmatism and authoritarianism in Peikoff or the formal Objectivist movement in his public comments at the time about Kelley. But "Anthemgate" does far more than offer a few "tweaks" to the current orthodoxy. He's saying the orthodox Ob movement is in its final blow-up; that nothing can stop it considering how plain Peikoff's words have made the issue; that this is a good thing. And he says why. I wish Tracinski had noted that he's saying many of the same things Kelley said twenty years ago. Nevertheless, it's an excellent article, far more substantive and important than the above-quoted dismissive lines suggest.

Roy did start an article to explain why he no longer believed in anarchism. This beginning-of-an-article is included in the anthology of Roy's work edited by Joan Kennedy Taylor shortly after his death and published by Laissez Faire Books. I just searched the LFB.org site for "Childs" and can't find the book, so maybe LFB is no longer carrying it.

This discussion is not sufficiently metaphysical for me. I would like some more metaphysics and also some more epistemology thrown in.

That's nothing. I have the entire series of the 1968 breakup, including LP recordings of all the dialogue of all the principals. Won it on eBay.