The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part V

[Brant Gaede]

An observation about the arbitrary just occurred to me.

If we accept Peikoff's formulation about an arbitrary assertion having no cognitive content, what would you call the act of taking a legitimate concept and calling it arbitrary?

Isn't this what Ayn Rand called a blank-out?

Seriously...

That's how I understand it.

So, in other words, Peikoff blanked out Barbara's book.

Michael

No. He never did that. He asked others to follow his stated lead and do that. Let's all pretend; it's the good Objectivist thing to do because Ayn Rand is the author of Atlas Shrugged. As soon as Nathaniel Branden in 1968 stopped lying, Leonard Peikoff started lying. There were four reasons for Ayn to keep her affair with Nathaniel a secret and effectively turn her personal life into a lie: to avoid embarrassment, to protect Atlas Shrugged which she was still writing, to have the affair since it had no clothes for public consumption, to be in control. LP continued this tradition for similar reasons regarding Objectivism and his place in it. The parasitical nature of his artificial moral and intellectual stature has always been at risk so he only displays himself, he hopes, on top of the ARI pedestal. He has turned the main public face of Objectivism into a lead sleigh and Ayn Rand into his icon.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I've been really busy these days, but I have to get back into the saddle. Look what I am missing. I went to SLOP after not reading it for a long while and lo and behold, there is this gem from Neil:

Parc Fallacies

Michael Kelly has a good discussion of the Donahue issue on his PARC fallacies thread on the Objectivist Living site (which might better be called So-Called Objectivists Who Lie for a Living).

Heh.

The Randian spirit works in strange ways...

Michael

[ThatGuy]

On 5/25/2009 at 2:25 PM, Brant Gaede said:

Our own government is acting for the destruction of this country and our enemies will soon be able to do an incredible amount of damage with a small amount of effort. In 10-20 years the US we know today may hardly even exist.

--Brant

"12 years later..."

[Peter]

We will still be standing in 2199 and onwards to the stars . . . .

[Brant Gaede]

On 9/23/2021 at 11:38 AM, ThatGuy said:

"12 years later..."

Sigh.

--Brant