News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

[Greybird]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

I'd pretty much have to agree with this take, except — in part — for "anti-intellectual." That speech coheres remarkably if it's taken on its own, as Rand did by reprinting it as the bulk of For the New Intellectual.

In the context of the novel, though, it doesn't earn its presence, because it doesn't link in plot, theme, or characterization to the rest of the novel. (As I've been saying to Phil.) Its being pushed upon the reader, without having yet justified its being presented so abruptly — that artistic choice is the anti-intellectual thrust of it. Far more than the speech itself.

As for "moralizing," I'd say it got that patina from Rand severely condensing her arguments, especially about the roots of ethics. Not from her giving up on presenting them. Galt is made to sound like a moralizer, even though, strictly speaking, he isn't one.

[Robert Campbell]

A couple of thoughts about Atlas Shrugged and the quality of the writing therein:

I am not a littérateur by trade, but I think that Ayn Rand was a far greater literary stylist than she's been given credit for in many quarters.

I was less bothered by Jennifer Burns' comments about her writing than by some of Anne Heller's, because Dr. Burns' orientation is not literary.

As for The Big Speech, I read it all the way through, the first time I read the novel, because I'm in the habit of reading things from beginning to end. It didn't ruin the novel for me.

After long familiarity with it, my estimate is that some passages from The Speech are brilliant, and eminently quotable. But the speech as a whole doesn't hang together all that well, either as an oration or as a philosophical treatise—probably because it was intended as both, and simultaneous optimization isn't in the cards.

And, man, is it heavy on the denunciation. When a latter-day Objectivist starts channeling The Speech, look out.

The worst passages in Leonard Peikoff's OPAR are the ones where he succumbs to overGalt.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

It's anti-intellectual because stylistically it doesn't engage the reader's brain but turns it off. I don't think many readers learned much about her philosophy reading that speech. If they had, what did they ever need the Nathaniel Branden Institute for? No wonder Rand had such a general low regard for students of Objectivism since she had such a high regard for her two years, if not a lifetime, of culminative intellectual labors. Why didn't they get it already? There it is!

--Brant

[Selene]

Thanks gentlemen:

Excellent points. I did not read more than 10 or 15 pages of THE SPEECH my first reading of Atlas because I found it a ridiculous intrusion into a great story. Lol, but I was 15!

"Galt is made to sound like a moralizer,..." and "...that artistic choice is the anti-intellectual thrust of it. Far more than the speech itself." "Rand wanted a stylistic and rhetorical hybrid. They're two incompatible tasks, with far different demands, and she couldn't manage it." Greybird

"It's anti-intellectual because stylistically it doesn't engage the reader's brain but turns it off." Brant

The Speech are brilliant, and eminently quotable. But the speech as a whole doesn't hang together all that well, either as an oration or as a philosophical treatise—probably because it was intended as both, and simultaneous optimization isn't in the cards. Robert C.

Frankly, as a piece of oratory over a radio medium, it sucked. As an exposition of a groundbreaking set of ideas/philosophy, it is stylistically brilliant for short spurts and an adequate foundation for growing a philosophy.

Unfortunately, the rigidity and the birth pangs of the objectivist movement were seriously crippled by personalities that clashed which is quite natural. It was painful to watch, but we survived.

Now let us begin.

Adam

[anonrobt]

n the context of the novel, though, it doesn't earn its presence, because it doesn't link in plot, theme, or characterization to the rest of the novel. (As I've been saying to Phil.) Its being pushed upon the reader, without having yet justified its being presented so abruptly — that artistic choice is the anti-intellectual thrust of it. Far more than the speech itself.

..................

How odd, considering it is abstracting from all the concrete examples given in the novel up to that point, tying it all together in a systemic comprehensive verbal essay...

[Xray]

Subject: Why I Seldom Post Anymore

In response to my post yesterday evening about the "Original Sin" passage from Galt's Speech, there was one reasonable response and post after post which were bad or misstating or ignored the passage entirely and "blew off" as of no importance the crucial issue I raised of what constitutes effective writing.

I did make a passing statement about, not people who skipped Galt's speech but came back to it in due course, but specifically people who are actually *bored* with it. I.e., they don't like the ideas and points it contains, or find them useless, or worth disregarding. One poster shifted my statement into a different one about those who skipped the speech or found it distracting from the plot. He castigated me for the viewpoint as he had shifted it slightly. He then stated that the speech does not name specific events in the novel, as if that were the only way to do what I said (integrate back to the novel). Or as if it meant that the intelligent reader would be unable to apply its principles to the novel or to have it resonate with the whole course of events of the novel. Another poster transformed a statement about who I personally would be likely to listen to wrt to criticism into a wider 'argument' which I did not make that one who wasn't a great writer should not be listened to more generally. A third poster simply asserted that the opposite of what I said was true, that the Original Sin passage was not good without giving an argument. A fourth and fifth poster simply resorted to sarcasm, taunting, or schoolyard name-calling.

Phil,

Instead of directly addressing the posters (entity identity please: WHO is it you are talking about??), you make complaints about 'one' poster 'another' poster, etc. Do you think this contributes to clarity?

In response to my post yesterday evening about the "Original Sin" passage from Galt's Speech, there was one reasonable response and post after post which were bad or misstating or ignored the passage entirely and "blew off" as of no importance the crucial issue I raised of what constitutes effective writing.

I'd like to get into more detail on the effective writing issue.

This post addresses JR's catalog: (# 338)

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7712&st=320&p=83496entry83496

I'm interested in your opinion on this.

Re the discussion of AS on the Dagny/Hank 'motor' thread:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7712&st=440

If you can answer my questions in # 452 and # 454 there, TIA.

Edited November 21, 2009 by Xray

[Jonathan]

...Another poster transformed a statement about who I personally would be likely to listen to wrt to criticism into a wider 'argument' which I did not make that one who wasn't a great writer should not be listened to more generally. A third poster simply asserted that the opposite of what I said was true, that the Original Sin passage was not good without giving an argument. A fourth and fifth poster simply resorted to sarcasm, taunting, or schoolyard name-calling.

You left out me. I pointed out that you're a hypocrite because you exempt yourself from the rules that you demand that everyone else follow. You don't measure up to standards that you set for others. You lack the qualifications that you denigrate others for lacking. You've achieved or created nothing while looking down your nose at others for not achieving or creating.

I think you need to take some new "thinking courses."

J

[jeffrey smith]

Subject: Why I Seldom Post Anymore

In response to my post yesterday evening about the "Original Sin" passage from Galt's Speech, there was one reasonable response and post after post which were bad or misstating or ignored the passage entirely and "blew off" as of no importance the crucial issue I raised of what constitutes effective writing.

*****

PS, Worst of all, perhaps, is the endless tit-for-tat posting wars in which neither party is willing to let the other have the last expression of personal contempt. Put downs. Insults. Cartoons. "Gotchas." There is a thinly veiled pretense of intellectuality, but in fact this is merely glorified feces-hurling between people who have nothing better to do with their time. The current contest, day after day, between Adam and Xray, is a classic example. And there is absolutely nothing anyone outside can say to get them to stop. The people who find this entertaining are probably those who find cockfighting, dismemberment, beer-guzzling contests, and monster truck rallies entertaining.

I think Galt's Speech is not integrated well enough with the rest of the book: it like Glastonbury Tor. Have you ever seen that? One tall lone hill sticking out from generally flat ground all around it like a giant's sore thumb.

The Original Sin passage is eloquent, but rather inaccurate: a caricature, not a true portrait of what Christians mean by Original Sin. (And one would think that Rand, being born a Jew, would know that Original Sin is specific to one religion only, Christianity.) And it ignores some of things that are present in the text of Genesis: for instance the fact that man was expected to work even before the "Fall"--the curse was not that he must work, but that he must "earn his bread by the sweat of his brow", with hardship and trouble and sorrow, just as childbirth is by the same curse made painful for woman--not that woman was not supposed to bear children before then (and that of course means that sex was already present before the curse was placed.)

As for your PS--you're totally correct there.

Jeffrey S.

Edited November 22, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just caught up to this thread.

Dayaamm!

Anyway, on to ideas and experiences...

Those who skipped the speech, or most of it, on first reading were not "bored," in my experience and personal queries. Most had one major concern: They'd lose track of the plot, or feared they'd lose interest in the plot, by interrupting it for 60 pages to read a philosophic treatise.

Steve,

This resonates with me and reflects my experience. On my first reading of AS, I was in a blaze of excitement. That speech was like a bucket of cold water on the "what happens next?" stuff burning inside me. So after reading about 5 pages, then flipping forward to see how many more were left and groaning, I thought, to hell with it. I'll go back and read it later. So I skipped it.

I don't feel an ounce of guilt about it, either.

I did read it on my second time through.

Michael

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

--Brant

Brant,

There's a fairly straightforward way for people to avoid this. Apply Objectivist methods outside of philosophy in different fields. Employ other methods. Apply the system in areas where the answers aren't there yet. Then come back to philosophy with some of the caveats and revisit old questions based on the new knowledge you have. Rand didn't command that people swallow her philosophy whole and I tend to think that those who do would have glommed on to something else in its place.

The system is self-reinforcing, so people should go farther afield. Get out and do economics (some Fisher and Debreu in financial economics not just the Austrians), systems engineering (see how black box models and generalized cross-disclipline models work like relating RLC circuits to spring-mass-dampers to viscoelastic systems in materials engineering). Try out Einstein. See how Minkowski four vector invariants or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or quantum mechanics relate to entity-action causality.

Study evolutionary biology, positive psychology, neuroscience, complex systems and bounded rationality in cognitive science. All of these areas provide support and qualified reservations about Rand's system.

In general, I'd say it's easy to get swept up into many different oceans. Human knowledge is like Ariadne's web and there are interesting nodal points that could take up our whole lives. The trick is to find the threads that connect the nodal points and allow us to get unstuck.

Part of the difficulty in Rand's system is that it does encourage certain reoccuring thought patterns. There's a distinction between how best to think when generating ideas and how best to think when validating them or evaluating them.

Jim

Edited November 22, 2009 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Guyau]

Nietzsche had given his own take on The Fall in §48 of The Anti-Christ. Here is a portion:

“So God created woman. And this really did put an end to boredom,—but it put an end to other things as well! The woman was God’s second mistake.—‘The woman is by nature a serpent, Heva’—every priest knows this; ‘woman brings all troubles into the world’—every priest knows this too. ‘Consequently she brings science as well’ . . . It was woman who taught people to eat from the tree of knowledge.—What had happened? The old God was scared stiff. People had turned out to be his biggest mistake, he had created a rival for himself, science makes you godlike,—it is all over for priests and gods when people become scientific!—Moral: science is the taboo of all taboos,—it is the only thing forbidden. Science is the first sin, the seed of all sins, the original sin. Only this is morality.—‘Thou shalt not know’:—everything else follows from this.—God’s big scare did not stop him from being shrewd. How do you defend yourself from science? That was his main problem for a long time. Answer: get people out of paradise! Happiness, idleness give rise to thinking,—all thoughts are bad thoughts . . . People should not think.—And the ‘priest-in-itself’ invents troubles, death, the moral dangers of pregnancy, every type of misery, age, hardship, and above all illness,—these are just tools in the struggle against science! Troubles prevent people from thinking . . . And nonetheless! Horrible! The edifice of knowledge piles up, storming heaven, bringing twilight to the gods.”

Comparison of what Nietzsche fables over the text and traditions of The Fall of Man and Original Sin with Rand’s passage on Original Sin is telling of differences in their philosophies. I should mention that when Nietzsche speaks of science, it is not meant in the narrow sense we set for the term today. Also, the ellipses in the quotation are in his original text; they do not indicate omissions of text.

For ages people have had mythic stories to tell why such-and-such is found as it is in the world. When I was a child and youth, the accounts from my parents were Christian. Some were these: The reason people die is because of The Fall. The reason there is such a thing as sexual desire is because of the The Fall. The hardness of our labors (literally, sweat of brow and thorns in fingers) is because of The Fall, also called Original Sin. (The fossils of great chambered nautilus, which relatives were using for doorstops, were from The Flood. Black people were cursed because of the sin of Seth.)

I had an interest in serious matters since about the sixth grade, a philosophical bent since at least the days of catechism, and before reading Atlas, I had taken my first college philosophy course (Thomist). I always enjoyed Rand’s remarks, in Galt’s speech, on the story of The Fall and Original Sin. I read the speech, in its sequence in the novel, in my first reading of the novel. I was ready for the speech, as the author had intended. Back in the Colorado valley, there were precursors for the speech on an evening get-together at Mulligan’s house, when Galt tells his story. When he makes his radio speech, the author is turning to the reader and saying “OK. Now I’m gonna tell you who is John Galt, what he and his story in this artful world mean in full.” It is like at the end of the movie The Bridge of San Luis Rey, when Geraldine Chaplin sweeps forward straight to camera as she speaks the final lines of the novel, the novel’s sublime moral. (Boy, I sat up, glued to our television screen, as she began her line “But soon . . .” I had begun holding my breath as it were, wondering if they were going to really do it. She began, and I thought “Yes! They’re gonna do it straight as he wrote it!” They did.)

I was very interested in everything being said in that first read of Galt’s speech. I had adopted reason as the sole authority before reading any Rand, and I had a saying: “To reason is to question.” So I read the speech with a critical set of mind, and I had some disagreements here and there (I no longer remember what they were). Scales fell from my eyes, and at least one night, many tears. I don’t recall the point of the speech I had reached, but I remember where I was. I was on my night job monitoring burglar alarms at a detective agency in my college town. I do recall what I was thinking as I wept. “But we didn’t know. . . . Why didn’t anyone say this before?” A lot of light was coming on for me. Later, as you know, I would learn a great deal about the history of ideas being interwoven in this new philosophy, and see more finely what in it is original.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two of the contributions in Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (2009) pertain to Galt’s speech. These are chapters 19 and 20, by Onkar Ghate and Allan Gotthelf.

At the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, this coming April, the Ayn Rand Society session will be an Authors-Meet-Critics event. The book will be the one I just mentioned. The speakers will be Christine Swanton, Lester Hunt, and William Glod. Authors responding will be Gregory Salmieri, Onkar Ghate, and Allan Gotthelf.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS

I forgot to mention that the Nietzsche translation is by Judith Norman (Cambridge 2005).

Edited November 22, 2009 by Stephen Boydstun

[Xray]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

Good points.

As opposed to AS, the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov", although quite long too, is perfectly integrated in the story.

Oh, yes, and by the way -- anyone who was too 'bored' to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel -- needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

I did read it all, every boring word (after several attempts, I finally plowed through it), and could not help but notice the theistic cadence of it.

Good grief, Phil, it's nothing but a fire and brimstone sermon with Galt the "God" on "judgment day."

Edited November 22, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

Good points.

As opposed to AS, the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov", although quite long too, is perfectly integrated in the story.

Oh, yes, and by the way -- anyone who was too 'bored' to read Galt's speech in its entirety, or failed to grasp how it integrates point after point in the novel -- needs to ask for a refund on those thinking courses.

I did read it all, every boring word (after several attempts, I finally plowed through it), and could not help but notice the theistic cadence of it.

Good grief, Phil, it's nothing but a fire and brimstone sermon with Galt the "God" on "judgment day."

Ms. Xray:

What in God's name did the church do to you as a child?

You really, for your own well being, need to, as the Werner Erhart folks would say at the Landmark Education programming, "get off it!"

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Jim,

I agree that Randians need to contend with ideas and questions well outside the scope of Objectivism, as it has been handed down to us.

There is no shortage of such questions.

In going through Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum answers, I've kept finding references to work undone. She says that epistemology is the most important branch of philosophy, yet she never has much progress to report on her never-completed treatise. Foundations of mathematics—a couple of guys might do something on it. Philosophy of law—really important, but she doesn't have the time or training to mess with it. And so on.

Robert Campbell

[Guyau]

Oops! The curse was on account of the sin of Ham, not Seth.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Jim,

I agree that Randians need to contend with ideas and questions well outside the scope of Objectivism, as it has been handed down to us.

There is no shortage of such questions.

In going through Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum answers, I've kept finding references to work undone. She says that epistemology is the most important branch of philosophy, yet she never has much progress to report on her never-completed treatise. Foundations of mathematics—a couple of guys might do something on it. Philosophy of law—really important, but she doesn't have the time or training to mess with it. And so on.

Robert Campbell

Robert,

Absolutely!

If and when nontrivial numbers of Randians and Objectivists start feeling free to address important new questions informed by Rand but not bound to her, the movement will have turned a corner. The challenges are so great and yet in the 27 years since her death so little new profound work has been done. Some of that is that it is hard to make a living doing that kind of work, but some can definitely be chalked up to the forces of conformity in the movement.

Jim

[Chris Grieb]

Jim,

I agree that Randians need to contend with ideas and questions well outside the scope of Objectivism, as it has been handed down to us.

There is no shortage of such questions.

In going through Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum answers, I've kept finding references to work undone. She says that epistemology is the most important branch of philosophy, yet she never has much progress to report on her never-completed treatise. Foundations of mathematics—a couple of guys might do something on it. Philosophy of law—really important, but she doesn't have the time or training to mess with it. And so on.

Robert Campbell

Robert,

Absolutely!

If and when nontrivial numbers of Randians and Objectivists start feeling free to address important new questions informed by Rand but not bound to her, the movement will have turned a corner. The challenges are so great and yet in the 27 years since her death so little new profound work has been done. Some of that is that it is hard to make a living doing that kind of work, but some can definitely be chalked up to the forces of conformity in the movement.

Jim

Jim; Good and very important point. I wonder if people will feel freer when Piekoff leaves this mortal coil.

[Ed Hudgins]

Brant,

There's a fairly straightforward way for people to avoid this. Apply Objectivist methods outside of philosophy in different fields. Employ other methods. Apply the system in areas where the answers aren't there yet. Then come back to philosophy with some of the caveats and revisit old questions based on the new knowledge you have. Rand didn't command that people swallow her philosophy whole and I tend to think that those who do would have glommed on to something else in its place.

The system is self-reinforcing, so people should go farther afield. Get out and do economics (some Fisher and Debreu in financial economics not just the Austrians), systems engineering (see how black box models and generalized cross-disclipline models work like relating RLC circuits to spring-mass-dampers to viscoelastic systems in materials engineering). Try out Einstein. See how Minkowski four vector invariants or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or quantum mechanics relate to entity-action causality.

Study evolutionary biology, positive psychology, neuroscience, complex systems and bounded rationality in cognitive science. All of these areas provide support and qualified reservations about Rand's system.

In general, I'd say it's easy to get swept up into many different oceans. Human knowledge is like Ariadne's web and there are interesting nodal points that could take up our whole lives. The trick is to find the threads that connect the nodal points and allow us to get unstuck.

Part of the difficulty in Rand's system is that it does encourage certain reoccuring thought patterns. There's a distinction between how best to think when generating ideas and how best to think when validating them or evaluating them.

Jim

Jim - I agree and well put! I recall a conversation with Robert Campbell a few years ago here in DC. We discussed and, I believe, agreed that someone coming from the usual, orthodox Objectivist mindset would have rejected the discoveries of quantum physics at the beginning of the 20th century. Because of their pre-conceptions they would simply have ruled out those discoveries out of hand. It's one thing to disagree with the exaggerated implications of these discoveries--objectivist reality does not exist--and quite another to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Or Rand was uncomfortable with the implications of human evolution. The work in recent decades in evolution and evolutionary psychology have important implications for our understanding of free will and ethics. Objectivists should be a part of this conversation because we have much both to learn and to add.

Phil Coates rightly talks about the importance of breaking out of the "Objectivist ghetto" meaning that we stop talking just to each other and be more engaged in the wider world of ideas where honest inquiry is going on. How true!

Ed

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ed,

I want to mention that your career is an excellent example of breaking out and talking to the rest of the world.

If that sounds like too much flattery for comfort... ... well, it's true.

It's one of the things I admire about you.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

--Brant

Brant,

There's a fairly straightforward way for people to avoid this. Apply Objectivist methods outside of philosophy in different fields. Employ other methods. Apply the system in areas where the answers aren't there yet. Then come back to philosophy with some of the caveats and revisit old questions based on the new knowledge you have. Rand didn't command that people swallow her philosophy whole and I tend to think that those who do would have glommed on to something else in its place.

The system is self-reinforcing, so people should go farther afield. Get out and do economics (some Fisher and Debreu in financial economics not just the Austrians), systems engineering (see how black box models and generalized cross-disclipline models work like relating RLC circuits to spring-mass-dampers to viscoelastic systems in materials engineering). Try out Einstein. See how Minkowski four vector invariants or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or quantum mechanics relate to entity-action causality.

Study evolutionary biology, positive psychology, neuroscience, complex systems and bounded rationality in cognitive science. All of these areas provide support and qualified reservations about Rand's system.

In general, I'd say it's easy to get swept up into many different oceans. Human knowledge is like Ariadne's web and there are interesting nodal points that could take up our whole lives. The trick is to find the threads that connect the nodal points and allow us to get unstuck.

Part of the difficulty in Rand's system is that it does encourage certain reoccuring thought patterns. There's a distinction between how best to think when generating ideas and how best to think when validating them or evaluating them.

Jim, there are no "Objectivist methods" unless you are talking about reason (up) or moralizing assault (down). In the case of the former, by all means use it; what other valid means are there? Overall your suggestions are quite valid, but the main references should always be reality and reason and don't necessarily appertain to Objectivism or you'll get Objectivist positions on all sorts of things which is its greatest scourge. Objectivism is not physics. Objectivism is not psychology except inside each person is a working mixture of philosophy and psychology. Academically the two are artificially bifurcated. Rand's mistake was completely over-emphasizing philosophy not just relative to psychology but to just about all the things she had any interest in. That's why one can study her "philosophy" for decades and not master it not realizing you aren't studying a philosophy but only a personal belief system--Rand's, not one's own,

--Brant

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Galt's speech isn't unreadable, but it's a hard, moralizing, anti-intellectual slog. An unentertaining sermon. Contrast it with Toohey's speech to Keating telling him what really was what, based literarily on the Speech of the Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov," the greatest speech I'm aware of in world literature. Galt's speech cognitively assaults the reader instead of cognitively engaging him. You don't argue with God and you don't argue with Rand and Rand's revealed truths. Some people get so enveloped by the polemical power of Ayn Rand they get swept down the Objectivist river into the Objectivist ocean and never really ever come back.

--Brant

Brant,

There's a fairly straightforward way for people to avoid this. Apply Objectivist methods outside of philosophy in different fields. Employ other methods. Apply the system in areas where the answers aren't there yet. Then come back to philosophy with some of the caveats and revisit old questions based on the new knowledge you have. Rand didn't command that people swallow her philosophy whole and I tend to think that those who do would have glommed on to something else in its place.

The system is self-reinforcing, so people should go farther afield. Get out and do economics (some Fisher and Debreu in financial economics not just the Austrians), systems engineering (see how black box models and generalized cross-disclipline models work like relating RLC circuits to spring-mass-dampers to viscoelastic systems in materials engineering). Try out Einstein. See how Minkowski four vector invariants or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or quantum mechanics relate to entity-action causality.

Study evolutionary biology, positive psychology, neuroscience, complex systems and bounded rationality in cognitive science. All of these areas provide support and qualified reservations about Rand's system.

In general, I'd say it's easy to get swept up into many different oceans. Human knowledge is like Ariadne's web and there are interesting nodal points that could take up our whole lives. The trick is to find the threads that connect the nodal points and allow us to get unstuck.

Part of the difficulty in Rand's system is that it does encourage certain reoccuring thought patterns. There's a distinction between how best to think when generating ideas and how best to think when validating them or evaluating them.

Jim, there are no "Objectivist methods" unless you are talking about reason (up) or moralizing assault (down). In the case of the former, by all means use it; what other valid means are there? Overall your suggestions are quite valid, but the main references should always be reality and reason and don't necessarily appertain to Objectivism or you'll get Objectivist positions on all sorts of things which is its greatest scourge. Objectivism is not physics. Objectivism is not psychology except inside each person is a working mixture of philosophy and psychology. Academically the two are artificially bifurcated. Rand's mistake was completely over-emphasizing philosophy not just relative to psychology but to just about all the things she had any interest in. That's why one can study her "philosophy" for decades and not master it not realizing you aren't studying a philosophy but only a personal belief system--Rand's, not one's own,

--Brant

Brant,

I once had a physics professor that joked about classical physics saying F=ma and all the rest is details . There is a sense in which that's true and a sense in which it's not. When I think about Rand's methods maybe they are better described as tools: unit economy, thinking in principle, essentialization, emphasizing meta-level issues, stolen concept fallacy, negative analysis (what could go wrong, how could a system or society break if a certain action is taken), measurement omission in concept formation etc.

I've wanted to write a paper on different cognitive styles and those missing or those assailed by Rand's system (I don't have time at present, but that will allow my thinking on this subject to process it little longer before I do). We all have thinking styles that formed pretty early on and each of us can change these to a certain degree, but they are surprisingly robust in the face of modification. I often think Objectivist philosophical training doesn't take these capacities into account or in many cases, bulldozes over them. Our styles affect how we receive Objectivism and they have more to do with how we became comfortable processing narratives of mental images early on than optimality or correspondence with reality. Suppose I have a pragmatist style and want the shortest way to an answer, or I have synthesist style and am speculative and use negative analysis. Rand's system isn't always kind to these approaches, but within given contexts they can be the best strategy.

So my thinking is that people should leverage their strengths and Objectivism is a set of tools that will help you keep from going too afar afield in the realm of speculation and conjecture.

Jim

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Brant,

There's a fairly straightforward way for people to avoid this. Apply Objectivist methods outside of philosophy in different fields. Employ other methods. Apply the system in areas where the answers aren't there yet. Then come back to philosophy with some of the caveats and revisit old questions based on the new knowledge you have. Rand didn't command that people swallow her philosophy whole and I tend to think that those who do would have glommed on to something else in its place.

The system is self-reinforcing, so people should go farther afield. Get out and do economics (some Fisher and Debreu in financial economics not just the Austrians), systems engineering (see how black box models and generalized cross-disclipline models work like relating RLC circuits to spring-mass-dampers to viscoelastic systems in materials engineering). Try out Einstein. See how Minkowski four vector invariants or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or quantum mechanics relate to entity-action causality.

Study evolutionary biology, positive psychology, neuroscience, complex systems and bounded rationality in cognitive science. All of these areas provide support and qualified reservations about Rand's system.

In general, I'd say it's easy to get swept up into many different oceans. Human knowledge is like Ariadne's web and there are interesting nodal points that could take up our whole lives. The trick is to find the threads that connect the nodal points and allow us to get unstuck.

Part of the difficulty in Rand's system is that it does encourage certain reoccuring thought patterns. There's a distinction between how best to think when generating ideas and how best to think when validating them or evaluating them.

Jim

Jim - I agree and well put! I recall a conversation with Robert Campbell a few years ago here in DC. We discussed and, I believe, agreed that someone coming from the usual, orthodox Objectivist mindset would have rejected the discoveries of quantum physics at the beginning of the 20th century. Because of their pre-conceptions they would simply have ruled out those discoveries out of hand. It's one thing to disagree with the exaggerated implications of these discoveries--objectivist reality does not exist--and quite another to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Or Rand was uncomfortable with the implications of human evolution. The work in recent decades in evolution and evolutionary psychology have important implications for our understanding of free will and ethics. Objectivists should be a part of this conversation because we have much both to learn and to add.

Phil Coates rightly talks about the importance of breaking out of the "Objectivist ghetto" meaning that we stop talking just to each other and be more engaged in the wider world of ideas where honest inquiry is going on. How true!

Ed

Ed,

Thanks! There are more and more libertarian first adopter type organizations sprouting up all over the place. One of these years I'll probably get to a Singularity conference. New fields like neuroeconomics are taking off in academia. The next several years should be very exciting! Technology hubs like MIT should be really fertile outreach opportunities.

Jim

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Brant,

There's a fairly straightforward way for people to avoid this. Apply Objectivist methods outside of philosophy in different fields. Employ other methods. Apply the system in areas where the answers aren't there yet. Then come back to philosophy with some of the caveats and revisit old questions based on the new knowledge you have. Rand didn't command that people swallow her philosophy whole and I tend to think that those who do would have glommed on to something else in its place.

The system is self-reinforcing, so people should go farther afield. Get out and do economics (some Fisher and Debreu in financial economics not just the Austrians), systems engineering (see how black box models and generalized cross-disclipline models work like relating RLC circuits to spring-mass-dampers to viscoelastic systems in materials engineering). Try out Einstein. See how Minkowski four vector invariants or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or quantum mechanics relate to entity-action causality.

Study evolutionary biology, positive psychology, neuroscience, complex systems and bounded rationality in cognitive science. All of these areas provide support and qualified reservations about Rand's system.

In general, I'd say it's easy to get swept up into many different oceans. Human knowledge is like Ariadne's web and there are interesting nodal points that could take up our whole lives. The trick is to find the threads that connect the nodal points and allow us to get unstuck.

Part of the difficulty in Rand's system is that it does encourage certain reoccuring thought patterns. There's a distinction between how best to think when generating ideas and how best to think when validating them or evaluating them.

Jim

Jim - I agree and well put! I recall a conversation with Robert Campbell a few years ago here in DC. We discussed and, I believe, agreed that someone coming from the usual, orthodox Objectivist mindset would have rejected the discoveries of quantum physics at the beginning of the 20th century. Because of their pre-conceptions they would simply have ruled out those discoveries out of hand. It's one thing to disagree with the exaggerated implications of these discoveries--objectivist reality does not exist--and quite another to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Or Rand was uncomfortable with the implications of human evolution. The work in recent decades in evolution and evolutionary psychology have important implications for our understanding of free will and ethics. Objectivists should be a part of this conversation because we have much both to learn and to add.

Phil Coates rightly talks about the importance of breaking out of the "Objectivist ghetto" meaning that we stop talking just to each other and be more engaged in the wider world of ideas where honest inquiry is going on. How true!

Ed

Ed,

Is there some good way to leverage the current health care debate to get more biology-oriented people involved in Objectivism? Part of the challenge is that biologists have such an array of exciting things going on in their own profession and they have their own powerful intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and others. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this.

Jim

[Jennifer Burns]

National Review. I stopped caring about that thing in 1964 and don't care to recare now or ever.

--Brant

Brant -

Disdain or even contempt for the stance of Buckley and National Review towards Ayn Rand and Objectivism is certainly understandable - and appropriate.

But not all conservatives associated with National Review have been hostile towards Rand. Some, such as Henry Hazlett, John Chamberlain, and E. Merrill Root, presented contrasting opinions from the Chambers attack. Isabel Paterson, reportedly recruited by Buckley to write for his magazine, severely chastised him and told him in a letter that, in her opinion, Rand certainly had justifiable grounds for a lawsuit, based on the Chambers article. Shortly thereafter, Paterson severed her connections to Buckley and did not write for this magazine.

National Review has been, from the start, a curious collection of varied streams of conservative thought, ranging from Buckley's dogmatic Catholicism through traditionalist, fusionist and libertarian varieties. It is also a bellwether of the conservative movement. Now that Buckley is gone, it is problematic whether the editors can hold it together, or keep it recognizable as a Buckley creation.

Why is this important? "To hell with National Review!" you say. If one can believe that there is currently enough Objectivists to turn this culture around "all by ourselves," well then, to hell with National Review and its ilk.

I, for one, cannot believe that Objectivists currently, or in the foreseeable future, possess that capability. Currently, the Objectivist movement is divided into quarreling factions that would rather fight each other than join in any sort of cooperative effort with "others" (e.g., conservatives and libertarians) to fight and defeat a common enemy. Hell, many Objectivists can't even get along with libertarians, most of whom share identical political and economic beliefs with us! Fifty years after the publication of Atlas Shrugged - and what do we have to show for it? Barack Hussein Obama. Not what I would call an example of the strong influence of Objectivists on our culture, or as progress toward a free society.

I do not care for the weltanschauung of National Review conservatives. But if Objectivists cannot form some sort of alliance against the forces of collectivism, then we will "all hang separately" (figuratively speaking,..I think...).

FYI, National Review told my publisher they planned "major coverage" of the book, and even assigned a reviewer, but since then... nothing! Too bad they don't want to continue the tradition of NR on Rand, I would have enjoyed being part of that (and feel as though I could predict the content of the review pretty easily...) -Jennifer

[Ed Hudgins]

MSK – Thanks for your kind words! It's nice to know that someone's noticing what I'm trying to do. I try to carry the torch!

Jim – I’d love to see a panel with Objectivists addressing singularity issues. And I’ve seriously thought of putting together a proposal to Liberty Fund for a seminar on “Freedom, Free Will and the New Psychology.” I could make up a great reading list.

Some of the stuff I’m working on now takes off on the discussion on the biological basis of ethics in Dawkin’s The God Delusion. As you know, Shermer deals with these matters as well in The Science of Good and Evil. And I’m currently tackling Dennett’s analysis in Freedom Evolves. I think it’s on this ground that we can really engage with the biology-evolution folks. They don’t quite know what to do with their insights about the biological basis of ethics. I think Objectivists can help here.

And since this thread on Burn’s fine book, I’ll add this. Burns does a good job looking at Rand’s engagement with and interest in other intellectuals and thinkers. But there wasn’t much of that after Atlas. That was in part because we had our work cut out for us just to get the basics of Objectivism out to a wide audience. But now’s the time to push engagement even harder if Objectivism is to have a future beyond a small island of fans.