Ayn Rand Speaker Series 2010

[Kat]

We attended a lecture on Capitalism by Yaron Brook last night at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Here is a link to his appearance on our local CBS news earlier in the day

http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=71894@wbbm.dayport.com

The next talk in Chicago is on September 9, 2010 also at the Hyatt.

"Using Ayn Rand's Values to Create Competitive Advantage in Business"

Presented by John Allison, retired chairman and CEO of BT&T Corporation, the 10th largest financial-holidng company in the US. During Mr. Allison's tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assts.

Check out Ayn Rand Center events for scheduled events.

[Philip Coates]

Thanks, Kat, for that great cbs2chicago clip! Brook was really on his game, very persuasive and convincing, dealing with a roundtable full of newspeople questioning him.

(Note though, that it's a series of clips, you have to listen to the first very short clip first, and Brook is the second. Also, the video is quite dim or dark, at least on my computer.)

Edited June 10, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Guyau]

Professor Tara Smith will be making some unkind remarks about pragmatism tomorrow evening at 6:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. That is at 151 E. Wacker Drive. There will be a Q&A beginning at 7:15 p.m. Admission is free.

The Menace of Pragmatism

How Aversion to Principle Destroys Values and Strangles American Business

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

On April 11 Andrew Bernstein will speak at Kansas State in Manhatten, KS. The event will be in the Student Union Little Theater and will begin at 7:30 p.m. His topic will be: Religion versus Morality.

In Robert Mayhew’s The Journals of Ayn Rand, take a look at the first entry in Rand’s first philosophic journal, the entry of April 9, 1934 (pp. 66–68).

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

I think Kat is going to see the Smith talk, since it is right near where she works. She asked if I wanted to go, but I declined.

I'm beginning to question formulations like the title of her talk--not that aversion to principle is good, but the way this kind of message is used in the orthodoxy to flog certain philosophers and point the finger. I'm moving into a phase of seeking solutions and methods, not just finger-pointing.

To illustrate by analogy (and I realize I am presuming, so I might be wrong), to me it would be like listening to a talk about how not having money destroys our buying capacity, and it's all the fault of this economist or that. So how to combat that? Go get some money.

I don't find that approach useful for anything anymore--maybe scratching the blame-game itch.

Michael

[Greybird]

Smith's talk will be stream-cast, quoth ARI's Washington affiliate:

"The talk will be livestreamed through the Ayn Rand Center Facebook page! Just visit http://www.facebook.com/AynRandCenter and click on the 'Livestream' link below the profile picture."

So Kat may not want to waste the gas. Wi-fi in Millennium Park, methinks, and enjoy a Spring day.

Other events are to be streamed. It's always better to let ARI spend its money on you.

Edited March 30, 2011 by Greybird

[caroljane]

Smith's talk will be stream-cast, quoth ARI's Washington affiliate:

"The talk will be livestreamed through the Ayn Rand Center Facebook page! Just visit http://www.facebook.com/AynRandCenter and click on the 'Livestream' link below the profile picture."

So Kat may not want to waste the gas. Wi-fi in Millennium Park, methinks, and enjoy a Spring day.

Other events are to be streamed. It's always better to let ARI spend its money on you.

But what if Kat wants to heckle?

[Dennis Hardin]

I'm beginning to question formulations like the title of her talk--not that aversion to principle is good, but the way this kind of message is used in the orthodoxy to flog certain philosophers and point the finger. I'm moving into a phase of seeking solutions and methods, not just finger-pointing.

Michael,

“Blame game”? I don’t get it. What’s wrong with flogging if the flogee deserves to be flogged?

That’s like telling a medical researcher not to put a diseased specimen under the microscope to study the nature of the pathology.

“We know you’re sick, but we don’t want to know the cause because that will make it look like we’re attacking the bacteria. But we would like for you to please get better—somehow. So please try a healthier approach to living from now on.”

Discovering what is wrong is essential to eliminating it and changing to something more effective. And the pragmatic disdain for principles, logic and reality is a good way of summing up what is wrong with America today.

To illustrate by analogy (and I realize I am presuming, so I might be wrong), to me it would be like listening to a talk about how not having money destroys our buying capacity, and it's all the fault of this economist or that. So how to combat that? Go get some money.

Maybe I haven't been keeping up on current events, but I think you’ve got it reversed. “Go get some money” is what you say when you haven’t “pointed the finger” at (i.e., identified) why you’re broke. Hopefully the financial expert would be able to explain how the ever-expanding growth of government has strangulated the producers. He would “point the finger” at the corrupt politicians and their partners in crime in labor and business. And he would explain that the way back to wealth is to stop them in their tracks (i.e., "no more damn taxes!!") before they make things even worse than they are.

Besides, it's fun to beat up on bad guys. And there are so few opportunities to have fun anymore.

[Guyau]

The live streaming did not work out this time, according to the ARC site. They hope to have some sort of recording of this evening’s talk available in the future. The outline of Prof. Smith’s talk:

Shouldn’t we all be pragmatists?




While Americans disagree vehemently about all manner of moral and political issues, beneath that disagreement rests the shared presumption that the way forward is invariably through moderation and compromise. We are united in our praise of pragmatism.

Contrary to pragmatism’s aura of offering simple, practical sense, however, the course that it recommends is actually corrosive; pragmatism destroys all the values—including market value—that it touches. Today, the maze of business regulations that are imposed for the sake of “balance” strangle productivity and sentence us to the slow rot of a mixed economy.

Dr. Tara Smith explains what pragmatism is and the countless ways it is manifested across the cultural spectrum, from the movies to business to politics. She analyzes the major elements of pragmatism’s appeal as well as its fundamental errors. Dr. Smith also explains the vast damage that pragmatic methods inflict, damage that is spiritual as well as material. Finally, she considers how we might most effectively dethrone this pervasive and self-defeating mindset.

A related talk by Tara Smith is available here. Coming from Prof. Smith, I would expect to learn worthwhile things in either of these presentations.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

There's nothing wrong with blame if it is simply a way to identify a problem you end up trying to fix--trying for real.

But mentioning a desired result after blaming and pretending that you did something more than just scratch an itch is an error.

To use my analogy, "get more money" isn't useful as a method.

How about putting a system together? Say, rethinking your attitude towards money (not just the guilt part Rand dealt with, which was a good thing), but learn how to separate it into different accounts when it comes in, i.e., learn how to manage your personal money as a discipline.

Also, learn the difference between one-off payments and recurring income, and provide services or goods for one-off payments to seed the recurring income projects (studying the different options, of course).

Learn how to use a three-circle Venn diagram to analyze your best shots at income. I happen to like this one, so I will provide an overview:

1. Make a list of everything you are passionate about--no matter how important or how silly, and no matter if you are skilled in it or not.

2. Make a separate list of everything you do really well, regardless of whether you are passionate about it or not. It's OK to overlap with the first list when this is the case.

3. Make another list of everything you can imagine yourself doing to make money. Once again, it's OK to overlap.

Put some time into these lists as there is no right and wrong. There is only what is good for you.

Use a three-circle Venn diagram, putting the items from the first list in one circle, the second list into the second circle and the third list into the third circle.

Start eliminating items that do not overlap with the other circles--first starting with two circles, then three.

What gets left are things you do well, are passionate about and you can make money doing them. If you put them in order starting with which makes the most money, that is what you should do to start with.

These things are what I mean by "system."

Saying "go get some money" is a far cry from usefulness like that.

The danger of overdoing the blame-game without adding (and implementing) a practical system to it is that you can get into a false sense of superiority and not really do anything as you piss your life away on a conceited trip to nowhere. After all, bashing someone or something does release some endorphins and a touch of serotonin and dopamine. So you can get a fix.

But a fix is not a life.

And it is only a solution in theory--not in practice.

That's what I was referring to.

Michael

[Kat]

shhhhhhh... don't tell Michael. I went to the talk at the Hyatt and it was pretty good. It didn't seem to be a waste of time or gas because it was interesting and I walked from work. I was curious though if the movie would be mentioned, but it wasn't.

Next Chicago talk is John Lewis - "Health Care: Where do we go from here?

May 24, 2011

Same Bat time. Same Bat channel.

Kat

[caroljane]

shhhhhhh... don't tell Michael. I went to the talk at the Hyatt and it was pretty good. It didn't seem to be a waste of time or gas because it was interesting and I walked from work. I was curious though if the movie would be mentioned, but it wasn't.

Next Chicago talk is John Lewis - "Health Care: Where do we go from here?

May 24, 2011

Same Bat time. Same Bat channel.

Kat

So you didn't heckle? It was pretty good, but not perfect in the way each and every Objectivist could think of, and you didn't speak up on that important point?

Sister, I'm disappointed in you.

[Philip Coates]

> shhhhhhh... don't tell Michael. I went to the talk at the Hyatt [Kat]

we won't tell him...that's why i typed this in all lowercase...

[Mark]

The most famous Pragmatist was John Dewey, best known for his work on education -- "socialization" instead of academic study, “service,” opposition to the Montessori Method, and in spite of that, "learn by doing."

Less known is this amazing little book about his visit to Russia in 1928:

Impressions of Soviet Russia

Did Tara Smith happen to mention it in her talk?

[Robert Campbell]

I should think that Tara Smith's talk, as just given in Chicago or as given at an OCON a little farther back, might have a lot in common with this article:

http://www.theobject...-pragmatism.asp

When I was a subscriber to The Objective Standard, I read the article. I didn't download a PDF of it, which means I didn't find it interesting enough to warrant keeping it around.

The problem with the article, as I saw it, is that Dr. Smith isn't particularly interested in pragmatism as a philosophical movement or tendency. Her scholarship is hardly there. This is particularly disappointing given Leonard Peikoff's extensive knowledge of some 20th century varieties of pragmatism; for anyone studying under Sidney Hook, it would have been nearly impossible not to learn about pragmatism.

Rather, the article performs a bait and switch, jumping very quickly to a condemnation of: having a short planning horizon, acting without principles, equating morality with expediency, and treating all significant human problems as socially constructed. Pragmatist philosophers did not all advocate such positions. And all of the views that she wishes to criticize predate the pragmatist movement by thousands of years.

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

> Rather, the article performs a bait and switch, jumping very quickly to a condemnation of: having a short planning horizon, acting without principles, equating morality with expediency, and treating all significant human problems as socially constructed. Pragmatist philosophers did not all advocate such positions. [Robert]

I disagree entirely with this insofar as it represents the Smith article:

1. It's not necessary that all of them take the exact same set of positions. James, Dewey, and Pierce differed on details. But it's legitimate to criticize the whole 'pragmatist worldview', the denial of principles, the skepticism implicit, and so on -- whether or not the 20th Century big three were the originators or whether some of it came from followers expanding on them, etc.

Here's one summary that show how broad the pragmatist -movement- can be:

(wkpd) "Pragmatism is an American philosophical practice founded, roughly, on the following hypotheses: that knowledge is a social phenomenon rather than introspective; that an object of knowledge must consider the conceivable effects upon our actions in order to conceive of the object in its entirety; that truth can only be found through ongoing investigation, in which we check our experiences against one another; that truth is never complete, as the future is always uncertain and may alter a current truth; that all knowledge is primarily a call to action, wherein we recheck it, build upon it, or use it to shape our society; that all learning changes the world, for part of its effect will be causing us to act differently than had we not learned."

[i underlined a few of the key parts. Clearly pragmatism is a grab-bag.]

2. Also notice in the same article that a -revised or extended- pragmatism has come about in recent decades which builds further upon the early pragmatists.

CONCLUSION: I might find Tara Smith -less- useful if she *didn't* deal with the broadest scope of the ideas. And their implications. Whether on not Dewey or Pierce acknowledged or realized them all.

> And all of the views that she wishes to criticize predate the pragmatist movement by thousands of years. [Robert]

3. Finally, in regard to the point that the Pragmatists weren't original, so what? Modern schools are often imitators of earlier ones but that doesn't mean you can't focus on the moderns and criticize them. Especially if they -or their more modern formulations- have been influential.

Edited April 3, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> Her scholarship is hardly there. [Robert]

This might be a problem if she doesn't tie it to any actual individuals, doesn't give -any- quotes, and is just 'free-wheeling'. Objectivists sometimes do this, painting with a broad brush in an unscholarly or vague or non-specific way.

I wish they would actually quote a passage that -proves- their attack against Hegel or Kant or whoever is a fair one.

(I think I have a copy of her entire article. I'll try to check it at some point.)

Edited April 3, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Guyau]

.

Pragmatism, Ethics, and Education

Ruth Anna Putnam

Consequences of Pragmatism

Richard Rorty (Minnesota 1982)

Pragmatism and the Reflective Life

Stuart Rosenbaum (Lexington 2009)

Pragmatism’s Advantage

Joseph Margolis (Stanford 2010)

A Companion to Pragmatism

John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, editors (Blackwell 2006)

Coming in May:

The Pragmatism Reader

From Peirce through the Present

Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin, editors (Princeton 2011)

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

Nozick on Principles

Edited April 4, 2011 by Stephen Boydstun