A Note on the DIM Hypothesis

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A Note on the DIM Hypothesis

A while back, Peikoff allowed people to listen to an online recording of his lecture on the DIM Hypothesis. I listened to it and commented as did other people (there's a thread somewhere around here on this).

I didn't comment much, though, because it didn't feel right and I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me.

I finally scratched the itch. Peikoff is trying to make reality fit into principles he deduced from the concept of integration.

Here is what I mean. Basically, Peikoff took integration, imagined two contrary states (disintegration and misintegration), then he set up a categorization and measuring system. After this was in place, he merrily went about trying to fit all human endeavors throughout all known history to this standard, pegging them with alphanumeric labels.

But here's the fundamental problem. Disintegration, which is destruction for the sake of destruction, and misintegration, which is putting parts together without correct connections between them (like the Frankenstein monster, to mention an example he gave), are not human activities he observed. They are permutations of the concept of integration, which he later applied to observations.

To be clear, the correct manner of arriving at a primary principle is to observe something, notice patterns and compare them to your knowledge and arrive at a conclusion. An error can occur when you derive a principle solely by imagining what it should be based on manipulating what you know up to that point. That's a guess, not a hypothesis. This kind of conclusion can be true or false, but it is a poor way to go about it because it is a second-hand method. Nothing can replace first-hand observation as a primary input. No amount of rationalization can.

I came to this realization because I am going through a marvelous book called Mindsight by Daniel Spiegel. Although it is a book on personal transformation, the philosophical principles are very clear.

Spiegel's idea is that integration is the key to sound mental health (he provides 8 domains for integration). There are blocks to integration that are at opposite poles from integration. This is somewhat similar to what Peikoff did except for a critical difference. Spiegel based his conclusions on observation first, then connected the dots (going from cognitive neuroscience to the mathematical theory of complex systems). Here is a comparison of the two:

Peikoff: Disintegration | Integration | Misintegration

Spiegel: Chaos<---> Integration <---> Rigidity

These might seem similar (and there is somewhat a parallel), but when you get into it, there is a difference. Peikoff believes people do the non-integrated stuff by choosing to think or evading thinking. Speigel claims that human beings live within a flow of integrated awareness where it is possible to act rigidly at times and chaotically at other times.

Frankly, I don't know many people who try to destroy stuff for the sole purpose of destroying it--usually when they are consciously destructive, they are protecting something or are serving some positive vision of their own. Or they snapped and lost it.

And when I have found people putting stuff together that doesn't fit, most often it has been because they committed themselves to some kind of conclusions and don't want to admit they were wrong, not because they were incapable of putting things together correctly or did not do so at other times.

Peikoff assigns "sense of life" as the cause of such epistemological corruption whereas Speigel believes the mind has a natural impulse toward health and integration and gets off track (in specific domains) for a variety of reasons.

I want to be brief, so here are a few of the ideas Spiegel mentions. But first, this is not just speculation. There is a branch of science he fostered, if not outright created: interpersonal neurobiology. (Google it, if you are not familiar with it, and you will see.)

Spiegel compared the human mind to the math of complex systems (such as clouds) because the characteristics fit: complex systems can become chaotic and they are open to input from outside them. They also regulate their own emergence.

He came up with an acronym that covers the fundamentals of this complex system: FACES

F - Flexible

A - Adaptive

C - Coherent

E - Energized

S - Stable

He calls a healthy mind one that lives in a "faces flow."

(I know some of this sounds like campy marketing, and it probably is. A guy's gotta eat, after all. But his ideas are my concern and they ring true to my ear.)

When mental integration in any of the 8 domains he identified is interrupted, the "faces flow" is also interrupted. Then there is trouble. Here are the 8 domains of integration he presents:

1. Consciousness (objective awareness of information from external world, from bodily state, from relationships, and from the mind itself).
2. Horizontal (fostering neuroplasticity for left-brain and right-brain integration).
3. Vertical (awareness of information from body, brain stem, limbic areas and cortex, i.e. becoming more aware of sensations, feelings, etc.)
4. Memory (implicit memory, which is basically subconscious memory that starts at the beginning of life, and explicit memory, which is made up of facts and autobiographical memories that enter awareness).
5. Narrative integration (aligning the narrative capacities of the left brain with the autobiographical memories of the right brain so they fit reality).
6. State integration (allowing one state to flow into and from another without painful conflicts and collisions from denial, shame, fear, etc.--this includes moods of closeness, solitude, autonomy, independence, caregiving, mastery, etc.).
7. Interpersonal (aligning our mirror neurons with people with whom we have relationships).
8. Temporal (finding assuring connections and situations in the face of the realities of time, i.e., uncertainty, impermanence and mortality).

btw - Spiegel defines integration as the linkage of differentiated elements of a system.

This differs somewhat from Rand's "blending of the units into a single, new mental entity" for concepts (see ITOE). This is what Peikoff adheres to. Spiegel thinks in terms of integrating systems whereas Peikoff thinks in terms of integrating entities (mostly as things--not always, but I mention it because my impression is that his approach conveys a "thing" bias, or "entity" bias, even when he is discussing systems).

We can discuss later whether it is valid to think one way or another (I believe it is correct to think in terms of both). Right now, I find Spiegel's approach far more valid for analyzing history and bodies of thought than Peikoff's.

For example, for non-integrated identifications, it is easy to imagine a rigid society or a chaotic one. I have observed that, both up close and I have read a lot of literature expressing these situations. It is awkward and forced to imagine a society where people predominantly practice disintegration or misintegration because they chose not to think. I have nothing I have lived that allows me to relate to this. except maybe when I read about "dumbing down" things for the masses through media and stuff like that. But that's not exactly where Peikoff is at.

A philosophy is integrated, rigid or chaotic. Better yet, different parts of almost any philosophy can be seen this way, and it can lean overall in one general direction or another. I find this a far better fit to what I have observed than a philosophy that is integrated, disintegrated, or misintegrated, or any vaguely blended combination thereof.

These descriptions sound similar, but I see a world of difference between them. Spiegel's method starts from zero and has only one rule: correctly identify based on observation. Peikoff's method is to fit identification into a previously set form.

Also, since we are discussing the human mind and the products of it, the idea of assigning an alphanumerical measurement and classification like Peikoff's "D-1," "M-3," etc., removes (or blurs over) important elements and contexts. It is far more precise to say that a fiction novel, for instance, is fully integrated in terms of memory, narrative and mind-body awareness, but the relationships are wooden (rigid) and the mood swings are chaotic, rather than say it is an "I-3" or "D-2" or whatever.

Another point. I really like the fact that Spiegel's approach weds well with Ken Wilber's holon stuff. (This is my thought, not Spiegel's or Wilber's.) So there is even a metaphysical validity to it. (I intend to drink more deeply from these waters, but later.)

I have a feeling that this issue is going to become more important in our neck of the woods as time goes along. Daniel Spiegel works with psychology, but his approach sits squarely on a solid epistemological foundation with a well-defined theory of the mind (which he defines as "a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information").

The question from an Objectivist view is how to we regulate that energy and information? Rationally or by whim? I hold that integration, as Spiegel uses the term, is fully rational.

So can we dream and build a world of heroic dimensions by moving rigidity and chaos in human thinking and behavior towards integration? Damn straight. Not only do I believe we can, I hold that correct identification is the foundation for making all dreams come true.

As for using the DIM Hypothesis for turning a magnificent vision into reality, I don't see it. Peikoff's foundation was primarily deduced and projected from a concept he got from Ayn Rand, not something he observed. It's an imagined principle in search of validation, not a conclusion from observation that cries out to be tested and refined so we can build stuff with it.

I get a single overwhelming impression when I think about the DIM Hypothesis (according to what I heard in Peikoff's lecture): form without content. A classification system based on arbitrary standards.

It's kinda like the old story of a country bumpkin and a tourist who asked for directions. After the bumpkin rambled on for a long time about going over there, no, over there, and then go that way, no, that other way instead, making the tourist more and more impatient, after a pause to scratch his head, the bumpkin finally concluded, "You know, you just can't get there from here."

(All right... all right... the story isn't a precise fit correspondence-wise, but you know what I mean.)

Michael

[PDS]

MSK: have you ever tried Bill Harris' Holysync tapes? Very interesting re: left brain/right brain integration. Sort of a lazy man's way of meditating.

[Brant Gaede]

All this folderol is an attempted end-run around true critical thinking and personal autonomy. Individualism is not compatible with Peikoffism.

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

A Note on the DIM Hypothesis

A while back, Peikoff allowed people to listen to an online recording of his lecture on the DIM Hypothesis. I listened to it and commented as did other people (there's a thread somewhere around here on this). I didn't comment much, though, because it didn't feel right and I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me. I finally scratched the itch. Peikoff is trying to make reality fit into principles he deduced from the concept of integration. Here is what I mean. Basically, Peikoff took integration, imagined two contrary states (disintegration and misintegration), then he set up a categorization and measuring system. After this was in place, he merrily went about trying to fit all human endeavors throughout all known history to this standard, pegging them with alphanumeric labels.

Michael, this is neither an accurate description of Peikoff's model of cultural analysis, nor an accurate description of how he arrived at it. Both of them seem sound to me. (My main objections are in how Peikoff ~applies~ the model--is Kant really a D-2?--but then that also well describes my misgivings with Objectivism, and that doesn't compel me to abandon Rand's ~philosophy~.)

I'd call your post a "hatchet job," except that it's more like a side-swipe. You really need to avail yourself of a ~lot~ more than the online posted recording of one lecture, before you can properly assess the nature and truth and validity Peikoff's theory.

To this point, I've carefully listened (at least twice) to the earlier version of the course, and I've pondered it for a number of years now. To me, Peikoff's DIM model looks pretty good, especially as a way to analyze the influence of philosophy on cultural trends, which is what he envisioned using it for. I reserve judgment about how fundamentally sound it is, but in my opinion, it's a lot more sophisticated and plausible than the picture you paint of it.

First of all, you refer to the alphanumeric labels, citing (elsewhere) M-3 and I-3. Peikoff uses no such labels in his system. M-2 is extreme misintegration. M-1 is a composite of M-2 and Integration. D-2 is extreme disintegration. D-1 is a composite of D-2 and Integration.

We might say here that you are inaccurately (whether inadvertently or, for the sake of ridicule, deliberately) accusing Peikoff of violating one side of "The DIM Razor": do not multiply DIM categories beyond necessity. (I made this up, but it seems correct.)

His ~derivation~ of the model was a lot more step-wise and thoughtful and observation-based and inductive than you suggest. He started out wanting to focus on the basic mental process of integration, how it goes right and how it goes wrong. Obviously, this involves a distinction between integration and non-integration. Peikoff later realized that not all failure to integrate properly was non-integration. Some was improper integration, rather than non-integration. Even later, he realized that some non-integration was simple concrete-bounded-ness, while other non-integration was active, deliberate anti-system-building. He similarly realized that some mis-integration involved trying to understand this world with ungrounded, floating abstractions, while other mis-integration was an active, deliberate rebellion against this world. (And Peikoff gave examples to illustrate the gradual process by which he arrived at his model, throughout the different stages of its development.)

Peikoff also categorizes people with no consistently recognizable DIM position as Eclectic. And anyone who has no cultural influence, because they do not speak out and advocate their views, he classifies as Nothing with regard to DIM. So, he definitely is ~not~ "trying to fit all human endeavors throughout all known history" into M-2, M-1, I, D-1, or D-2. If a person or a human endeavor has no cultural influence, it isn't forced into the DIM categories. If a person or a human endeavor is mixed and incoherent in its nature, it isn't forced into the DIM categories.

So, there's the other side of "The DIM Razor": do not fail to differentiate DIM categories in disregard of necessity. Again, Peikoff has continued to modify his provisional insights and expand his model, as questions and difficulties arise that a given formulation cannot deal with. This seems about as objective and fact-focused as a theorist can be, don't you think?

To be clear, the correct manner of arriving at a primary principle is to observe something, notice patterns and compare them to your knowledge and arrive at a conclusion. An error can occur when you derive a principle solely by imagining what it should be based on manipulating what you know up to that point. That's a guess, not a hypothesis. This kind of conclusion can be true or false, but it is a poor way to go about it because it is a second-hand method. Nothing can replace first-hand observation as a primary input. No amount of rationalization can.

Believe me, I am very sensitive to the issue of Rationalism, in the Randian sense of force-fitting arbitrary ideas and floating abstractions to stubborn, gritty reality and air-brushing away inconvenient facts when they don't fit one's model. My own analytic approach (using tetrachotomies) is hardly more difficult to grasp (nor different in principle) than Rand's use of the Law of Excluded Middle in exploding false dichotomies, yet I have been skewered numerous times by OL and TAS folk for the supposed sin of "Rationalism." (I take some comfort in noting that they have produced little more themselves than rehashes of Rand's ideas and criticisms of anyone who tries to think outside of the box of Orthodox, Canonical Randianism.)

It's very easy to look at someone's finished (or even provisional) model and cry "Armchair Rationalism" or "floating abstraction," without having any idea or care to know just how many years of study and thought about philosophy or culture went into getting first a faint, then a clearer and clearer glimmer that a certain pattern was occurring in reality, and finally a good description of that pattern. I mean, we just as well criticize the Law of Excluded Middle as "arbitrary" and "simplistic" and complain that "reality isn't like that." There ~are~ logicians peddling such sophisms in journals and professors infecting our young people with those sophisms in the universities--and we wonder why people can't think clearly any more about ethics and politics.

Frankly, I don't know many people who try to destroy stuff for the sole purpose of destroying it--usually when they are consciously destructive, they are protecting something or are serving some positive vision of their own. Or they snapped and lost it. And when I have found people putting stuff together that doesn't fit, most often it has been because they committed themselves to some kind of conclusions and don't want to admit they were wrong, not because they were incapable of putting things together correctly or did not do so at other times. Peikoff assigns "sense of life" as the cause of such epistemological corruption whereas Speigel believes the mind has a natural impulse toward health and integration and gets off track (in specific domains) for a variety of reasons.

Peikoff sets aside psychological issues and looks at what is being spoken and advocated in a given cultural area, viz., what philosophical premises are being promoted by one's explicit words. (Art is the exception, he says, because it ~shows~ philosophy, rather than speaking it.) But he acknowledges that people ~do~ get off-track, and some ~are~ nihilistic, i.e., out to destroy a certain area. Whether this is due to deliberate evil or psycho-pathology (caused by bad genes or horrible upbringing), it is a fact that there are people who "want to bring the system down," whether its a government, an educational system, art, or whatever. True, there aren't ~many~ people who want to destroy just to destroy, but it doesn't take many to have a deadly effect, if they're placed well and especially if they camouflage themselves (as Kant masqueraded as an upholder of reason).

Spiegel defines integration as the linkage of differentiated elements of a system. This differs somewhat from Rand's "blending of the units into a single, new mental entity" for concepts (see ITOE). This is what Peikoff adheres to. Spiegel thinks in terms of integrating systems whereas Peikoff thinks in terms of integrating entities (mostly as things--not always, but I mention it because my impression is that his approach conveys a "thing" bias, or "entity" bias, even when he is discussing systems).

Whether you talk about "elements of a system" or "units," it's the same basic idea. Rand said concepts were "mental entities." A system of concepts is a system of "mental entities" or "cognitive elements," no? In general, a system is a group of entities that interact with one another. Is this a problem, some sort of "bias," to look at it this way? I think that Spiegel seems to veer off in the direction of process-philosophy, where he thing-afies actions and processes. To me, this is both a category error and a Stolen Concept. The ~idea~ of a thing with a nature and engaging in actions is ~formulated~ in terms of physical entities. To then say this is a "bias" seems to be shooting oneself in the cognitive foot, don't you think?

We can discuss later whether it is valid to think one way or another (I believe it is correct to think in terms of both). Right now, I find Spiegel's approach far more valid for analyzing history and bodies of thought than Peikoff's. For example, for non-integrated identifications, it is easy to imagine a rigid society or a chaotic one. I have observed that, both up close and I have read a lot of literature expressing these situations. It is awkward and forced to imagine a society where people predominantly practice disintegration or misintegration because they chose not to think.

This is a caricature of Peikoff's approach. He focuses not on social ballast who do not think, let alone speak out in a philosophically coherent way, but on those who verbalize and advocate philosophical views in their field of activity. He does not evaluate social ballast in DIM terms. But you need to hear the whole course or read the book, in order to get this.

I see a world of difference between them. Spiegel's method starts from zero and has only one rule: correctly identify based on observation. Peikoff's method is to fit identification into a previously set form...As for using the DIM Hypothesis for turning a magnificent vision into reality, I don't see it. Peikoff's foundation was primarily deduced and projected from a concept he got from Ayn Rand, not something he observed. It's an imagined principle in search of validation, not a conclusion from observation that cries out to be tested and refined so we can build stuff with it. I get a single overwhelming impression when I think about the DIM Hypothesis (according to what I heard in Peikoff's lecture): form without content. A classification system based on arbitrary standards.

Michael, this is grossly simplified and a false dichotomy. Peikoff's model was based on the interplay of Peikoff's understanding of the concept of "integration" and the proper or improper or non-functioning of that process and decades of accumulated evidence from many different areas of culture. It is a huge integration and facts and principles, correct or not.

The best remedy for the "overwhelming impression" you derived from hearing one outdated DIM lecture is to listen to the rest of the course. Or, to do as most will do who care about such things, read the book when it comes out, and see the full context of DIM's context and derivation. (Of course, there are those here on OL who will delight in taking their own potshots at DIM without even reading the book. You know who you are.)

Daniel Spiegel works with psychology, but his approach sits squarely on a solid epistemological foundation with a well-defined theory of the mind (which he defines as "a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information").

Doesn't sound "solid" and "well-defined" to me. Sounds like a floating abstraction. Fuzzy neuro-psychology. Gobbledy-gook. What the hell would a ~non-relational~ process be? Or a ~disembodied~ process? And how can ~processes~ regulate anything? It is physical systems (causally interacting entities and parts of entities) that engage in actions such as regulating the flow of energy. If Spiegel wants to argue that mind ~is~ brain or nervous system, then great. But it sounds to me like he's trying to argue that mind is some woozily conceived, entity-like thing ~within the brain, but distinct from it~ that makes things happen. But that's just my "overwhelming impression" from reading the definition you quoted. :-)

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

I'll get into the meat of this a little later, but I do want to comment now that the familiarity you say I don't have with Peifkoff, you definitely don't have with Speigel. For some reason, that doesn't seem to stop you from saying the follwing about this man's work, though:

Doesn't sound "solid" and "well-defined" to me. Sounds like a floating abstraction. Fuzzy neuro-psychology. Gobbledy-gook.

So, are you comfortable with your standard? I.e., we have to have mind-numbing familiarity with all the intricacies of Peikoff's hypothesis before we can even venture a contrary opinion, but all we need is a comment from someone to bash the hell out of another system--one that happens to be producing results in reality, results that anyone including you can test--I might add.

I don't know how to do this kind of discussion when two vastly opposing standards are used, especially when the subtext I got coming from your comments is not to discuss the ideas behind how to apply integration to life (including philosophy), but to defend Peikoff at all costs.

If you are interested in the idea, I'm all for it--starting with defining integration. (And I'm even open to looking deeper into what Peikoff did, since I only know his hypothesis from one listen of the full presentation he did back then and reading some comments from others.)

If you're interested in defending Peikoff like fundies do, that holds practically no intellectual value for me.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Roger,

I'll get into the meat of this a little later, but I do want to comment now that the familiarity you say I don't have with Peifkoff, you definitely don't have with Speigel. For some reason, that doesn't seem to stop you from saying the follwing about this man's work, though:

Doesn't sound "solid" and "well-defined" to me. Sounds like a floating abstraction. Fuzzy neuro-psychology. Gobbledy-gook.

So, are you comfortable with your standard? I.e., we have to have mind-numbing familiarity with all the intricacies of Peikoff's hypothesis before we can even venture a contrary opinion, but all we need is a comment from someone to bash the hell out of another system--one that happens to be producing results in reality, results that anyone including you can test--I might add. I don't know how to do this kind of discussion when two vastly opposing standards are used, especially when the subtext I got coming from your comments is not to discuss the ideas behind how to apply integration to life (including philosophy), but to defend Peikoff at all costs.

I don't know where to start with your misrepresentations and inaccuracies and downright dirty fighting, Michael. Jeezus H. Christ, you are hyper-sensitive and over-reactive. You need to take a chill pill, or something.

1. I am ~not~ "bash[ing] the hell out of another system." I don't know the ~first thing~ about his system. I can't even get past the nonsensical ~definition~ of "mind" that you quoted from Spiegel/Speigel, however his name is spelled. His system may make perfect sense, if you can dig your way past all the painful verbal and conceptual speedbumps, such as needlessly verbose phrases like "relational and embodied process" (what's wrong with "process"?), or the notion of something other than the brain regulating the flow of energy and information in the body (and then, what's the function of the brain?). (Your accusation wouldn't have made even superficial sense if you had quoted the rest of my paragraph, showing that I was not bashing Spiegel/Speigel's system, but critiquing his ~definition of mind~.) I can assure you that if Branden or Peikoff had proferred such a ghastly definition of "mind," I'd have raised ~hell~ about it. But hey, if Spiegel/Speigel's system helps you to "apply integration to life," knock yourself out! Quantum physics works, too, despite some of the philosophically absurd formulations and interpretations of it. Why that should inhibit people like me for attacking the conceptual foundations of ~either~ theory not clear, however.

2. "Defend Peikoff at all costs"?? What the hell is ~that~ supposed to mean? Anything the reader wants it to mean, I suppose, with the hoped for (?) result that they will think I am some kind of fawning, unquestioning disciple of Peikoff, who never challenges his ideas or exercises my own independent judgment--and worse, someone who slams shut my mind to new ideas if they don't have the seal of approval of Peikoff and ARI. (Never mind that I have been harshly critical of Peikoff IN PRINT in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and have introduced numerous fruitful ideas of my own and others that people in TAS, on OL, on Poodle-Poop, and on So Low Bashin' have seen fit to ridicule.) What I ~did~ do in my comments was to point out the ~actual~ process of development of Peikoff's DIM model and his empirical approach to confirming/falsifying it by looking at many fields of culture--as against your depicting him as an armchair Rationalist spinning a mind-numbing set of categories labelled with a crow-boggling number of alphanumerics, all based on arbitrary, baseless ideas that he got second-hand from Rand, anyway. I pointed out that he simply had three main DIM types, with two intermediates, plus the Eclectics, plus those who didn't have an explicit view on a particular area--as against your portraying him as some kind of mad chef, feverishly stirring alphabet soup (non-existent I-3 and M-3? tsk-tsk, Michael!), following a recipe concocted by his imagination (and/or Ayn Rand). I'm defending ~Peikoff~ at "all costs"? Certainly not. Trot out a decent, informed critique of Peikoff, and I will bow to you and kiss your feet. But not for the crap you posted earlier.

If you're interested in defending Peikoff like fundies do, that holds practically no intellectual value for me.

Fair enough. But I'm no longer beating my wife either.

3. Setting aside your near-slanderous suggestion that I am (or am like?) a fundamentalist defender of Peikoff (after all the critiques I've made of his obvious errors), I'm simply pointing out how you have misrepresented, caricatured, etc. Peikoff's theory. It still may be wrong in principle or harmful in application--AND THOSE WOULD BE GOOD, INTELLECTUALLY VALUABLE THINGS TO KNOW--but your limited knowledge of his model is not an acceptable basis for the misleading comments and grotesque caricature you have made of it. Aren't you even a ~little bit~ embarrassed about this?

4. Further, how you can equate your wholesale trashing of Peikoff's theory with my indignant objection to Spiegel/Speigel's definition of "mind" is beyond me. I said ~very little~ about Spiegel/Speigel, and certainly ~nothing~ about his character or originality. (Ummm...did Spiegel/Speigel second-handedly get his ideas from Norbert Wiener?) There really ~are~ "two vastly opposing standards" being used here, Michael--you're right about that much. Straining at a gnat in order to swallow an elephant, methinks.

REB

[Philip Coates]

> If you're interested in defending Peikoff like fundies do, that holds practically no intellectual value for me.

Michael, to defend a doctrine of Peikoff's is not the same as 'defending Peikoff' generally. And it is a smear to add to this 'like fundies do'.

I hope you will rethink that kind of statement.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

You keep doing it. Let me go through a few of your descriptions:

• "hatchet job"
• more like a side-swipe
• You really need to...
• ... you are inaccurately (whether inadvertently or, for the sake of ridicule, deliberately) accusing Peikoff ...
• I think that Spiegel seems to veer off in the direction of process-philosophy...
• To me, this is both a category error and a Stolen Concept....
• This is a caricature of Peikoff's approach.
• But you need to hear the whole course or read the book, in order to get this.
• Michael, this is grossly simplified and a false dichotomy.
• The best remedy for the "overwhelming impression" you derived from hearing one outdated DIM lecture is to listen to the rest of the course. [btw - I listened to the entire series back then, as I stated.]
• What the hell would a ~non-relational~ process be? Or a ~disembodied~ process? And how can ~processes~ regulate anything?
• But it sounds to me like he's trying to argue that mind is some woozily conceived, entity-like thing ~within the brain, but distinct from it~ that makes things happen.

That's just in the first post. Here's the second:

• ... your misrepresentations and inaccuracies and downright dirty fighting, Michael.
• ... you are hyper-sensitive and over-reactive. You need to take a chill pill, or something.
• I can't even get past the nonsensical ~definition~ of "mind" that you quoted from Spiegel/Speigel, however his name is spelled.
• ... if you can dig your way past all the painful verbal and conceptual speedbumps...
• Your accusation wouldn't have made even superficial sense...
• ... if Branden or Peikoff had proferred such a ghastly definition of "mind"...
• What the hell is ~that~ supposed to mean? Anything the reader wants it to mean, I suppose...
• ... as against your portraying him as some kind of mad chef, feverishly stirring alphabet soup...
• Trot out a decent, informed critique of Peikoff, and I will bow to you and kiss your feet.
• Setting aside your near-slanderous suggestion that I am (or am like?) a fundamentalist defender of Peikoff...
• I'm simply pointing out how you have misrepresented, caricatured, etc. Peikoff's theory...
• ... your limited knowledge of his model is not an acceptable basis for the misleading comments and grotesque caricature you have made of it.
• Aren't you even a ~little bit~ embarrassed about this? [For the record, no I am not.]
• ... equate your wholesale trashing of Peikoff's theory with my indignant objection to Spiegel/Speigel's definition of "mind"...
• Straining at a gnat in order to swallow an elephant, methinks.

What am I supposed to do with this? Discuss ideas?

Why on earth would you want to kiss my feet, much less kiss the feet of anyone?

Whatever. Different strokes for different folks.

But now that you have told me what I know, how I know it, what I don't know, why I don't know it, how embarrassed I should be, what I should do with myself, and so on... what ideas are left to discuss? Kissing feet?

That's a hell of a way to ask, "What do you mean?" (if that is what you intended, and I am not sure).

I have too much on my plate for this approach to rhetoric right now. It takes too long to untangle all the yelling.

For the record, you are right about the DIM numbering stuff. I was going on memory. I thought the whole approach was silly back then and I still think it is. I remember clearly Peikoff's voice--in an eenie-meenie-minie-moe tone--several times in the Q&A saying things like, "No, XXXXX (important scientist or philosopher), is actually a D2 (or whatever)." That's probably why I didn't remember it correctly. Eenie-meenie-minie-moe apparently left a stronger impression on my memory than Peikoff's pigeon-holes for some of the best brains on earth.

For what it's worth, thank you for correcting that.

But, to not waste an opportunity, let me quote one Roger Bissell from this very thread. However, instead of thinking about the unfair comments made about his ideas, I am thinking of his unfair comments about Spiegel's ideas like "floating abstraction," "fuzzy neuro-psychology," "gobbledy-gook," "woozily conceived," "nonsensical ," "ghastly definition," (none of which is "bashing" anything, of course).

It's very easy to look at someone's finished (or even provisional) model and cry "Armchair Rationalism" or "floating abstraction," without having any idea or care to know just how many years of study and thought about philosophy or culture went into getting first a faint, then a clearer and clearer glimmer that a certain pattern was occurring in reality, and finally a good description of that pattern.

That's exactly what you have done with Spiegel on this thread, where simple questions instead could have prompted simple answers. (And there are such.)

But you preferred the name-calling negative rhetoric, despite admitting, "I don't know the ~first thing~ about his system."

Aren't you just a little bit embarrassed?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

> If you're interested in defending Peikoff like fundies do, that holds practically no intellectual value for me.

Michael, to defend a doctrine of Peikoff's is not the same as 'defending Peikoff' generally. And it is a smear to add to this 'like fundies do'.

I hope you will rethink that kind of statement.

Phil,

Within this context, nah. I stand by what I meant by that.

But within a less hostile context, you have a point.

The problem with emotion-laden discussions is that passages can be quoted out of context and, in the wrong hands, words like that can be intentionally used to portray a meaning they were not intended to convey..

So let me say it differently: "If you're interested in defending Peikoff's pronouncements like some fundies do, that holds practically no intellectual value for me."

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

On coming across Michael's post a few days ago, I thought there were a number of points that warranted comment.

Then came the hot blasts... and I found other ways to spend my time.

Let's see whether we can keep the heat-to-light ratio within reasonable bounds.

Michael charges Leonard Peikoff with using a rationalistic procedure to develop his model of distintegration vs. integration vs. misintegration.

Roger rejects Michael's analysis as unfair to Peikoff:

His ~derivation~ of the model was a lot more step-wise and thoughtful and observation-based and inductive than you suggest. He started out wanting to focus on the basic mental process of integration, how it goes right and how it goes wrong. Obviously, this involves a distinction between integration and non-integration. Peikoff later realized that not all failure to integrate properly was non-integration. Some was improper integration, rather than non-integration. Even later, he realized that some non-integration was simple concrete-bounded-ness, while other non-integration was active, deliberate anti-system-building. He similarly realized that some mis-integration involved trying to understand this world with ungrounded, floating abstractions, while other mis-integration was an active, deliberate rebellion against this world. (And Peikoff gave examples to illustrate the gradual process by which he arrived at his model, throughout the different stages of its development.)

But notice how Roger describes what Peikoff did.

Every one of the key notions ("basic mental process of integration"; "failure to integrate properly"; "non-integration"; "improper integration"; "concrete-boundedness"; "deliberate anti-system-building"; "ungrounded, floating abstractions"; "deliberate rebellion against this world")

• is highly abstract

• was already part of Rand's epistemology

• presupposes the correctness of the portion of her epistemology that Rand published (i.e., her theory of concepts)

• presupposes that the Objectivist epistemology can be completed using those same basic notions, without major additions and without any significant revisions

This is very much a top-down procedure. Now if Peikoff were offering new observations or data concerning the cognitive processes employed, either when integration is being done the right way, or when it is being done one of the wrong ways, there would be a bottom-up component to it. But Peikoff does not appear to be conducting any sort of psychological inquiry, and from his point of view there is no value in conducting one; he is on record claiming that psychology has everything to learn from epistemology and epistemology has nothing to learn from psychology.

Now I don't share Michael's stated view (the same, ironically, as Peikoff's frequently expressed opinion) that all top-down theorizing is shot through with "rationalism" and doomed to be bootless.

But you still have to test your theory and see what happens when you try to apply it.

And from what I've seen of DIM, Peikoff is taking on a major burden of correctly understanding many different systems of thought or cultural trends, then painstakingly assessing the goodness of fit between their various properties and those predicted or specified by his DIM theory.

From the mere fact that Peikoff some way or another can attach a label (D2, D1, I, M1, M2, Eclectic, or None) to each instance, not a whole lot follows.

(1) Is the categorizing reproducible? Could anyone who is not Leonard Peikoff learn the DIM theory, perform his or her own analysis of the system or trend, and arrive at the same result?

(2) Beyond reproducibility, how is the categorizing actually done? Is its basis what Peikoff says it is?

At the very least, anyone who tries to apply or test the DIM theory has masses of data, historical and cultural, to master. And Peikoff's handling of some of the data does not inspire confidence in the reliability or the validity of his procedure.

For instance, I've heard that Peikoff has declared Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem to be D2, or hopelessly disintegrated. But Peikoff's published statements about the theorem make it painfully obvious that he neither understands it nor has made any effort to understand it. Since he does not know, and may not care to know, what the theorem is, his classification of it is unlikely to be accurate—and any further implications Peikoff might think follow from this classification are also called into question.

Robert Campbell

[BaalChatzaf]

For instance, I've heard that Peikoff has declared Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem to be D2, or hopelessly disintegrated. But Peikoff's published statements about the theorem make it painfully obvious that he neither understands it nor has made any effort to understand it. Since he does not know, and may not care to know, what the theorem is, his classification of it is unlikely to be accurate—and any further implications Peikoff might think follow from this classification are also called into question.

L.P. is a mathematical ignoramus. The Incompleteness Theorems of Goedel are metamathematical theorems about a certain class of first order formal systems in which the postulates of arithmetic have been embedded. The theorems have been proven in a dozen different ways since Goedel first published them in 1931 (that is 80 years ago!). No mathematician who knows his stuff has a problem with the Incompleteness Theorems.

I have already had a one on one with L.P. (many years ago) over matters mathematical. His opinions concerning the field of mathematics are either trivial or worthless.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Then came the hot blasts... and I found other ways to spend my time.

Robert,

I was totally surprised by this. I hold great esteem for Roger, but I tend to react poorly to attacks out of the blue from people I like.

Also, I consider forum writing to be a way to work through ideas, not as anything written in stone. So I really get irritated with surprise frontal assaults without any attempt to see what I am getting at. (I don't like this when it happens to anyone for that matter).

Anyway, I, too hope the dust has settled.

I don't want to go into Spiegel's work right now except to note that I did not do justice to presenting it. There is an enormous amount of empirical work he builds on used and I am frankly blown away by the way he has (1) connected bridges between the different scientific disciplines and (2) worked it all up in a system that is testable and usable by normal people (I mean by normal "not specialists"). But I will write more about this after I am able to put it in the language and terms used more in this neck of the woods. I am still new to it and the thrust of my opening post was in the innocent spirit of, "Hey! Look what I found!"

Although there was a flare-up with Roger, that is still where I am at.

Now I don't share Michael's stated view (the same, ironically, as Peikoff's frequently expressed opinion) that all top-down theorizing is shot through with "rationalism" and doomed to be bootless.

Where did I state that? Because if I did, I did it poorly. I do top-down theorizing myself. Also, I think one of the best top-down theorists of all time is Ken Wilber. The more I learn about him, the more I admire him.

Not to lose my edge, even with Wilber's holons, I have found a few things I disagree with. But when I compare this to his insights (the ones I have read), his genius far outweighs the stiff I disagree with.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

here

(1) Is the categorizing reproducible? Could anyone who is not Leonard Peikoff learn the DIM theory, perform his or her own analysis of the system or trend, and arrive at the same result?

(2) Beyond reproducibility, how is the categorizing actually done? Is its basis what Peikoff says it is?

Robert,

These are precisely the objections I have. That's why I satirized it as "Eenie-meenie-minie-moe."

"What Peikoff says it is" isn't much of a standard, is it? You might even call it, er... arbitrary.

I have no problem with setting filters and using them on observable things like bodies of thought or history. I'm not even against using Peikiff's variations of integration as descriptions of some things.

But I believe Peikoff's version of integration based on his own definition is the whole problem. If you start with something limited and not derived from reality (and I don't mean bottom up, but instead both top-down and bottom-up at the same time), you can extrapolate it in any manner you want and flop all over the place. It's a false premise.

I see integration in general differently than he does and I'm willing to define my terms, although I do not have a complete definition I am fully comfortable with right now--I am still mulling over the ideas. For instance, Peikoff defines integration as "an active human process of putting elements together to make a whole." This is a direct quote from the series I listened to in 2006. This definition is quoted on Betsy Speicher's forum, but you can see my post from back in 2006 on OL here, where I mentioned it.

Note that Peikoff's definition deals with methods of cognition only. I don't find his notions of grouping ideas according to disintegration and misintegration reflected in the rest of reality, so these forms of groups are only in human minds.

In my view, I would find a way to include the background or environment or context or whatever you want to call it in the whole, and how distinct parts--i.e. smaller wholes--are made up of distinct parts that are made up of distinct parts, etc. Right now, I'm happy with holon, but I'll deal with this later. The "human" thing Peikoff mentions only pertains to human cognition. I hold this process cannot be hermetic to humans without being a purely mental process disconnected from reality, so the process itself must reflect reality to be aligned with existence.

In other words, my definition of integration for human cognition would have to arise from a definition of integration as it pertains to the organization and relationships of other stuff that exists. That would include how stuff is related in a non-integrated manner (like chaos, for instance). This comes from my conviction that human beings are made of the same stuff as the rest of reality.

Here's an analogy to make clear what I think of deriving such a system from a false premise.

The PAN Hypothesis

Suppose I decided to make a standard for judging food taste and I decided to call good taste "chocolate." I don't mean chocolate as one flavor among many. I mean chocolate as the standard of what is correct for taste in general. (I find this derivation similar to what Peikoff means by integration in human cognition without relating it fundamentally to metaphysical integration.)

Now suppose I start noting that not all food tastes like chocolate, even though some people find other foods to be important. Don't they know that chocolate is the only correct form of identifying and judging taste in reality? Why do they do that? I'm frustrated, so I start tasting this and that and come to the conclusion that some flavors obliterate the taste of chocolate (the actual flavor of chocolate), like hot red peppers, and others will not combine with chocolate at all no matter what I do, like fish. What to call them? Why, Nonchocolate and Antichocolate, of course.

Wow! That's nothing short of a standard of how to judge all foods. But since not all analogies work 100%, let's add something Peikoff didn't do with DIM. Let's make a term for chocolate that highlights the integrative aspect. We don't want to confuse it with chocolate as one flavor among others. So let's call integrative chocolate "Panchocolate."

That's clever, too. Huh? Food is cooked in pans, so PANchocolate works as a perfect term for chocolate qua standard that all humans should use in judging taste in food.

Wait a minute! Look at the other two categories, Nonchocolate and Antichocolate! Get a load of this:

P

anchocolate

A

ntichocolate

N

onchocolate

Wow! We're really getting somewhere. If I need a name, I can call my system the PAN Hypothesis. Just look at the connections!

But we need to put it in a form that we can measure in order to call it a hypothesis. That means we have to be able to measure it and test it.

No. That's wrong!

Let's do better and use the hypothesis to measure everything else. Woah! I like that! No problem and problem solved!

Down to business time. We already know that there are not always pure instances of antichocolate and nonchocolate, so let's make a numerical categorization:

Panchocolate = P

Antichocolate = A1 (some panchocolate plus antichocolate) and A2 (pure extreme anitchocolate)

Nonchocolate = N1 (some panchocolate plus nonchocolate) and N2 (pure extreme nonchocolate)

What about exceptions? Well, what about them? We can make categories for them, too.

Food that is widely appreciated but does not fall within PAN will be called Eclectic.

Food that is not widely appreciated will be called Nothing.

For instance, chocolate-covered ants would be a Nothing because, even though this food includes chocolate, it is not widely appreciated.

Let's get to work, folks. There's a lot of food to PAN categorize. And make sure to stay away from A2 and N2. Nasty stuff...

Michael

[Mark]

A good synopsis of DIM, especially as applied to the 2004 presidential election, can be found here:

http://ariwatch.com/PresidentialElections-2.htm#DIM

The synopsis is buried in the middle of a long article, hence the #DIM in the webpage address.

[Robert Campbell]

Mark,

Thanks for posting the link.

Peikoff seems to know nearly nothing about current cultural trends.

After his misadventure in 2006, Peikoff has backed off from telling his followers to pull the lever marked "R" or "D." I wonder how he would categorize Barack Obama. Is "Progressivism" misintegrated or disintegrated, from his point of view?

Robert Campbell

[Roger Bissell]

Mark,

Thanks for posting the link.

Peikoff seems to know nearly nothing about current cultural trends.

After his misadventure in 2006, Peikoff has backed off from telling his followers to pull the lever marked "R" or "D." I wonder how he would categorize Barack Obama. Is "Progressivism" misintegrated or disintegrated, from his point of view?

Robert Campbell

Robert, a cartoonist named Bosch Fawstin posted this last July:

"At the 2010 Objectivist conference/OCON, Dr. Leonard Peikoff was presenting material from his forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis, in which he analyzes Western culture and history from the perspective of the epistemological process of integration. I was surprised to learn that, according to Peikoff’s analysis, Barack Obama is not, as I and others have been saying, a socialist or communist. Socialists or communists are examples of what Peikoff calls “misintegration,” or integration by non-rational means. Obama, Peikoff thinks, is anti-ideological, and as such has no long-range guiding values or theory of society. He does not integrate his thoughts and actions by any means, valid or invalid. Rather, Peikoff describes Obama as an almost-but-not-yet-fully consistent egalitarian nihilist, and thus a manifestation of the same trend which Peikoff calls D2, i.e., the form of Kantianism that gave us non-objective art, quantum mechanics, and progressive education."

Here is the link: Obama is Not a Socialist

You have to decide whether you think Obama is a hard-core, radical communist in "Pragmatist clothing," or just a fact-oriented, problem-solving, non-ideological guy like he and his leftie supporters try to claim. I've been hearing the latter rubbish for so many decades (starting back in the 60s and 70s) that I automatically suspect "commies" hiding behind centrist, "pragmatic" rhetoric. (Let's set aside our abstractions and ideologies and be practical problem-solvers. Yeah, right.) Maybe LBJ was a genuine pragmatist. Maybe Clinton was a genuine pragmatist, but I doubt it. Obama? Nope. Don't think so.

In terms of DIM, then, unlike Peikoff, I would say Obama is an M-2 totalitarian in D-2 nihilist-pragmatist clothing. To decide whether he's M-2 or D-2, you simply have to decide whether he's an authentic Pragmatist, or is just trying to give that appearance for public support, votes, re-election, etc. I think it's as simple as that, anyway. Rational men and women can disagree about this...

I am sure of one thing: I wouldn't trust Obama any further than I could throw him.

REB

[Robert Campbell]

Roger,

Thanks for this tidbit from Bosch Fawstin.

I consider Obama to be, at heart, a "Progressive," as that notion has been understood in the United States for a bit over a century. He believes in paternalistic rule by experts in nearly every area of life and, in the mold of Woodrow Wilson, would much prefer that the United States had no written constitution. Add a dash of postmodernism, season with Chicagoland political tactics, and voilà.

I have no idea how to classify Obamian "progressivism" using DIM resources.

I also very much doubt that any valuable implications for practice follow from whether Obama's worldview gets an M or a D.

Robert Campbell

[kiaer.ts]

I have to agree with that fully, Roger. Obama is an M2 in D2 clothing. He wishes to appear non-ideological. Look at the recent abandonment of the "virtual border fence" by Napolitano. It was never a serious strategy. Now they have come up with something better, a new series of oppressive regulations on gun sellers in border states. The enemy was never the enemy - american citizens are. A D2 would err on the side of the free market and individual rights on occasion. Obama never does.

[Roger Bissell]

In terms of DIM, then, unlike Peikoff, I would say Obama is an M-2 totalitarian in D-2 nihilist-pragmatist clothing. To decide whether he's M-2 or D-2, you simply have to decide whether he's an authentic Pragmatist, or is just trying to give that appearance for public support, votes, re-election, etc. I think it's as simple as that, anyway. Rational men and women can disagree about this...

My sincere apologies. It is really unclear whether Obama is an M-2 totalitarian, or a D-1 pragmatist liberal. (D-2's are nihilists, anyone wanting to destroy for the sake of tearing something down, not as the precursor to a New Order.) So, the question becomes: is Obama a D-1 Pragmatist liberal as he sometimes is alleged to be (by himself or his supporters), or actually an M-2 totalitarian-in-Pragmatist-clothing? (I really don't think he wants to destroy for the sake of destroying, though some of his far left supporters indeed may.)

For me, the answer is still the same, just D-1 camouflage (rather than D-2 camouflage) of an essentially totalitarian power-lusting mentality. But if anyone wants to argue that beneath Obama's cool exterior beats the heart of one of those rare beasts: a D-2 Nihilistic Hater who wants to smash all productiveness, rather than simply to subjugate it to his loving control, well go on and make your case!

But the bottom line, as before, is: I don't trust the man and I fervently hope he's a one-term President.

REB

[Neil Parille]

Any idea when the DIM book, Harry Binswanger's book on consciousness or Milgram's authorized bio will be out?

-Neil

[Roger Bissell]

Any idea when the DIM book, Harry Binswanger's book on consciousness or Milgram's authorized bio will be out?

-Neil

Just guessing, but I think that DIM will be out in the next year or two. I'm really looking forward to reading it and to seeing the public discussion of it. I've long wished that Objectivists would make it a priority to get their material out of the "aural/oral" domain and into print. Easier to consume, easier to study, easier to critique, etc. Riskier for the author, of course. :-)

As for HB's book on consciousness, I have no idea. From what I've seen of it so far, I don't think it's going to add much to Branden's The Psychology of Self-Esteem and Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses. I'm sure I will have plenty to say about it, but I'm so excited with my own projects that I really don't need the distraction!

Milgram's book should be interesting -- kind of a more coherent version of 100 Voices. I love biographical material, even when it's a fawning airbrushing of flaws, or when it's a despicable act of defamation. :-)

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I believe the difficulty in pigeonholing Obama to a DIM scale shows just how unrelated to fundamentals (in reality, not in permuting "integration") the categories are.

Notice the difference when the cognition scale is:

Rigidity <---> Integration <---> Chaos

Of everything I have read about Obama, the thing that most makes sense to me is Dinesh D'Souza's theory that Obama is anticolonialist. He presents this in depth in his book, The Roots of Obama's Rage. Here is the sales-copy from his website:

from the inside flap

YOU WILL NEVER SEE OBAMA THE SAME WAY AGAIN

He's been called many things: a socialist, a radical fellow traveler, a Chicago machine politician, a prince of the civil rights movement, a virtual second coming of Christ, or even a covert Muslim.

But as New York Times bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza points out in this shockingly revealing book, these labels merely slap our own preconceived notions on Barack Obama.

The real Obama is a man shaped by experiences far different from those of most Americans; he is a much stranger, more determined, and exponentially more dangerous man than you'd ever imagined. He is not motivated by the civil rights struggles of African Americans in the 1960s — those battles leave him wholly untouched. He is not motivated by the socialist or Marxist propaganda that hypnotized a whole generation of wooly-minded academics and condescending liberals — those concepts also leave him cold.

What really motivates Barack Obama is an inherited rage — an often masked, but profound rage that comes from his African father; an anticolonialist rage against Western dominance, and most especially against the wealth and power of the very nation Barack Obama now leads. It is this rage that explains the previously inexplicable, and that gives us a startling look at what might lie ahead.

In The Roots of Obama's Rage you'll learn: Why Obama's economic policies are actually designed to make America poorer compared to the rest of the world Why Obama will welcome a nuclear Iran Why Obama sees America as a rogue nation — worse than North Korea The real reason Obama banished a bust of Winston Churchill from the White House and ordered NASA to praise the scientific contributions of Muslims Why Obama would like to make America's superpower status a thing of the past

Stunning, provocative, original, and telling — no one has better diagnosed who Obama is, what he intends to do, and why he poses an existential threat to America than Dinesh D'Souza in The Roots of Obama's Rage.

from the back cover...

We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it's not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father's dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father.

Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s — a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.

Whether anyone agrees fully with D'Souza or not, I believe a person has to actively blank-out large chunks of evidence to dismiss this theory altogether--including how Obama has acted and reacted in the past, and how he is currently reacting to his changed political situation.

Now let's look at this through the cognitive theory of Disintigration / Integration / Misintegration.

Where does Obama's anticolonialism fit?

It doesn't.

Now try Rigidity / Integration / Chaos.

Where does Obama's anticolonialism fit in that?

How about "Rigidity"?

Yup.

Bingo.

Obama has set his mind rigidly to a doctrine he learned growing up instead of using his mind to integrate all the facts he can.

Maybe we can apply the Misintegration category to the anticolonialist doctrine in the halls of high office in the USA (instead of in, say, Kenya of times past), but not to Obama's cognitive practice per se. He's more rigid in pursuing his strategy than anything else. He might be flexible and/or integrative in his tactics, but not in his strategic goals.

At root, this even goes into my idea of the cognitive-normative inversion.

Instead of stepping back, looking at the facts dispassionately and integrating that whole process, then evaluating and choosing a course of action Obama is on a pre-evaluated mission where he fully integrates facts he finds in order to carry that mission out, but he no longer integrates facts in order to explain fundamental reality. He is very selective about which facts he chooses, but not about how to integrate them to his mission. In that sense, he integrates just fine.

Notice that the mission could be anything--even something correct--and there would still be a lot of damage. (Just look at the Objectivist movement for an example.) When you replace integration with rigidity as a cognitive method for looking at fundamental reality, that is the root of the damage that gets caused.

This is what makes Obama so hard to categorize according to DIM. The standard isn't relevant to his fundamental cognitive method.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

Good points.

I'm not convinced of D'Souza's theory [really, Ikenga's theory, as Ted reminds us below], though I think it should be taken seriously.

One can easily find other examples of rigidity in Barack Obama's thinking:

• Pretending that a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia has the same meaning in 2011 that a nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union had in 1980

• Getting elected because his opponent looked like a deer in the headlights when Lehman Brothers went down, yet pursuing once elected the same domestic program (ObamaReidPelosiCare, cap and trade) that he would have pursued during boom times

Robert Campbell

[Roger Bissell]

(Caveat: the following is based on my repeated listening to and transcription of Peikoff’s DIM lectures 9 and 10 and represents my own understanding of how DIM applies to Obama. I’m not aware of how Peikoff analyzes Obama’s DIM status.)

Unlike D’Souza’s method of analysis, Peikoff’s DIM in politics focuses not on the psychology of the "players," but on their stated ideological goals. So, the key to understanding Obama in terms of DIM is to figure out where he says he wants the U.S. to go, with his redistributionist, power-grabbing policies.

Basically, we're wondering: is Obama an M-2 dogmatic idealist, who wants to forcibly remake society according to an overall principle or philosophy, hoping to uplift it and make it better than it is now? Or is he a D-1 pragmatist liberal, who wants a hodge-podge of freedom and controls, to have a prosperous ~and~ "socially just" society, etc.? Or is he a D-2 nihilist smasher, who wants to tear down the market and productive institutions, and not replace them with something better?

It’s clear that Obama’s policies are quite destructive--not just expropriative and redistributive, but tearing down the vitality and productivity of various segments of the economy. So, it’s helpful to look at how Peikoff DIM analyzes whether given people want to smash or level the state or economy or industrial society, etc., do so for the sake of smashing (D-2) or in order to remove obstacles to their preferred new order based on a radically different philosophy (M-2).

Look at Obama’s stated ideology and pursued domestic policies -- he has said for over 10 years that he thinks the Constitution and Bill of Rights don't provide adequate "justice" and that wealth should be redistributed, to make the society more moral and just. So, this suggests he's either D-1, pragmatic, mixed economy, welfare state liberal -- or M-2, dogmatic socialist. It ~sounds~ like he wants a “better” society, either by tweaking the present system, or by “fundamentally restructuring” it, as he has said on numerous occasions. Does Obama honestly believe that producers under duress will keep on being the geese that lay the golden eggs for the government to expropriate and redistribute, as long as they're allowed ~some~ measure of freedom? Or does he instead think that producers must be regimented and commandeered, "for the good of society," whether or not they continue to create a high standard of living? If the former, he's a D-1 welfare statist -- if the latter, he's an M-2 socialist, probably of the fascist variety (rather than communist). Personally, I think he's the latter. He’s ~far~ too interested in heavily regulating or taking over one segment of the economy after the other, rather than simply redistributing wealth via taxation (D-1 liberal). He wants to smash the free market, not productivity per se (not realizing? that smashing the former smashes the latter). I don’t think any of this yet adds up to D-2, nihilistic smashing.

Consider also his stated ideology as reflected in his foreign policy, and his background (hatred-based?) ideology of anti-colonialism. His policies seem aimed at leveling the U.S. economy and our standard of living not only domestically but internationally, and to pull down our military dominance and security as well. D’Souza says these policies, both domestic and foreign, are based on Obama’s underlying ideology of anti-colonialism. But the question is: is this simply a rationalization for resentment and hatred, a desire to smash the good without replacing it with something better, or is it (misguided or not) an idealistic, philosophically based desire to make the world better and uplift everyone? Peikoff would ask whether such smashing or leveling is done for its own sake – to assuage Obama’s festering, inherited multi-generational hatred and resentment of the U.S.’s power and prosperity that permitted it to be an imperialistic power that bullied the Third World – or to lead us to a glorious New World Order that is an actual improvement over what went before. Leveling for the sake of leveling, Peikoff says, is D-2. Leveling for the sake of setting up a new, world-wide redistributionist global government is M-2. So, does Obama want to redistribute the U.S.’s wealth and tear down its power as an ~apology~ for being great and as long-overdue “atonement” for having a better standard of living – or in order to facilitate a global New World Order?

Peikoff says don’t go by psychology, but by explicit statements. What does Obama ~say~? Basically, it sounds like he thinks it will not hurt us to “spread the wealth,” and that he doesn’t want to plunge us into Third World misery and poverty. (I think he’s wrong, though, and that this is exactly what his policies would do.) He ~sounds~ like he wants to have his (productive) cake and eat (confiscate) it, too. In this, he sounds like a D-1 welfare statist, but I think this is window dressing for his also-stated ideal of a "fundamentally transformed," “socially just,” redistributive society, and he is not shy at wielding Presidential power to make fundamental changes, going around Congress through the use of Executive order and non-confirmed appointed czars. So again, M-2 socialist.

D’Souza’s article suggests that what’s important is not explicit ideology or stated policies, but the underlying demons a politician brings to office. What does Obama ~feel~? If his rage and resentment is as great and central as D’Souza claims, he very well may have no goal beyond “taking us down a peg or two.” D-2. But I really do think he is not just a smasher for kicks, but a smasher for power-lust, so he can rule a “fundamentally transformed” system, as part of a New World Order. M-2. So, it seems that Obama’s motivations are in tune with his stated philosophy, and that he is being disingenuous when he tries to backpedal on his “fundamental transformation” rhetoric and package himself as a centrist, pragmatist, moderate liberal. (I gag every time I hear the media lefties talk about how angry they are with him for “moving to the center.” If Obama is a centrist, FDR was a laissez-faire right-winger!)

Summary: I still think what I thought several days ago, that Obama is a power-lusting totalitarian M-2 presenting himself in pragmatic, welfare state D-1 clothing.

REB

[kiaer.ts]

Please note that the Obama as anti-colonialist theory is not original with Dinesh D'Souza. L E Ikenga published the theory in the American Spectator in the summer of 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/obama_the_african_colonial.html and the idea was spread widely by Rush Limbaugh who read the article on air and talked about it for two days. D'Souza's book, which you can search at Amazon, makes no mention of Ikenga.