William O

Right, I don't regard Rand's claims about the history of philosophy as proof, nor Peikoff's, etc. I don't think other people should do so either, unless they have verified the claims themselves. The claim was not that Rand's claims about the history of philosophy do not amount to proof, the claim was that a specific, detailed interpretation of Kant's ethics is correct. My background knowledge about Kant doesn't indicate that Smith's interpretation is correct, so I'm skeptical of his interpretation. The standard I accept, which is the same one I use everywhere, is the author's credentials and reputation among relevant scholars in the academic community. If they don't have those credentials, then I don't regard their work as proof, although it can be the starting point for research that may lead to my acquiring proof of their claims. I do not claim be able to disprove his interpretation, so I have no reason to debate him.

Jonathan, would you mind listing your main points of disagreement with Objectivism? Your position is that Objectivism contains a number of errors, so the conversation would probably be clearer if we had a list of at least, say, your top five or ten disagreements.

My standard of proof for a claim to the effect that a philosopher said or believed something is that either (1) I have personally read the philosopher in context and verified that he believed the claim, or (2) I have read a reputable secondary source and the secondary source asserted that he believed the claim. My basis for this standard is that there are countless incorrect interpretations of philosophers floating around, because interpreting a philosopher correctly is very hard. George H. Smith is not a Kant scholar, and I haven't studied Kant closely enough to know that his claims about Kant are true first hand, so this article does not meet the burden of proof, in my view. However, the article is interesting enough that I will probably do some reading in the secondary literature to double check the interpretation of Kant I have held up to this point.

I suspect there are as many interpretations of Kant as there are Kant interpreters.

I think there's a difference between writing an article for a general audience and having a conversation with a specific person. If you're writing an article for a general audience, you can be passionate without turning people off, because no one will feel targeted. This is one reason why Rand's articles are so effective. However, if you're talking to a specific person, it can be advisable to tone things down a bit so that they don't feel attacked, which will turn them off to your ideas. Another issue is that they may have some argument you haven't heard before, which can be a problem if you've made the conversation really intense and passionate. I find it's better to just calmly put my views forward for consideration. For example, consider this conversation: A: "I believe in God." B: "Believing in God is a childish fantasy that no adult should take seriously." Now, B may be right about all that, but A isn't going to be open to B's arguments from this point on, because A will feel like they are being attacked. A better approach would be to say "Why do you believe in God?" and explore their reasons calmly and civilly, which is the ask and listen method. I'm not saying you have to coddle every ridiculous point of view, of course, but if it is a view they could have arrived at honestly then it's better to try to hear them out.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss methods of presenting or arguing for Objectivism that posters have found effective. I don't know if I've ever converted anyone to Objectivism, but one thing that I've found effective in online discussions is posting relevant Ayn Rand quotes. Rand was very good at compressing her ideas into easily digestible snippets, so quotes from her work can be a powerful way of getting people interested in her philosophy. The only Objectivist book focusing on rhetoric that I know of is Peikoff's Objective Communication, and I think Mrs. Speicher's book spends some time discussing the "ask and listen" method where you try to find out the other person's concerns before presenting your own position. If anyone knows of other Objectivist work on rhetoric then I would be interested in hearing about it.

I initiated a productive thread contrasting logical positivism and Objectivism a while back.

It looks like Mrs. Snow last visited the forum back in December of 2015, so it might be a while before a question to her receives an answer.

I haven't played video games in a long time, but I remember finding video games that relied really heavily on mysticism for their plot as not that enjoyable. There are some video games where you'll be fighting one enemy, and then he'll die for no reason and you'll be inexplicably transported to another location where you have to do something weird that magically helps you accomplish your goal even though there is no rational connection between them, etc. Games like that aren't fun for me because I like to see the plot move along in a logical fashion. I don't remember much about The Legend of Zelda, but my impression was that it wasn't like that, for the most part. The characters all have believable motivations and the events in the plot have logical connections to one another. The princess gets kidnapped, and then the brave knight has to carry out a series of daring quests to defeat the evil king and rescue the princess. So, there is magic in the game, but the values of the game are not fundamentally mystical, at least as I remember it.

I like the three tiered model that Harrison came up with, but I think a more useful way of organizing people is in terms of intelligence and education than in terms of rationality. In the Objectivist movement, there are three tiers: 1. Intellectuals, like Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff. This tier is responsible for originating new ideas, finding new reasons in favor of the tenets of the movement, providing intellectual guidance to the other members of the movement, and debating intellectuals in other movements. An intellectual typically has seven to ten years of serious study under his or her belt. 2. Informed advocates (I don't know a better term for this tier), like us. This tier has a decent understanding of the tenets of the movement and is capable of explaining many of the positions and arguments of the movement. This tier studies the work of the intellectuals and discusses and spreads the ideas of the movement in the broader culture. Yaron Brook has guessed that there might be 100,000 people like this in the Objectivist movement. 3. Laymen (again, this might not be the best term). This tier has heard of the movement and might agree with or be influenced by its ideas, but does not have the ability to explain or defend them to the extent of the informed advocates or intellectuals. The important thing to note is that these three tiers will appear in any movement. In the Objectivist movement, they tend to correspond roughly to degrees of rationality, but similar divisions appear in other movements. For example, a Kantian philosophy professor will have better arguments than a Kantian philosophy major, and both will have better arguments than a layman who has some Kantian ideas. This also relates to logical omniscience and the ability to see logical connections, since a person in tier 1 of almost any movement will tend to be able to see more logical connections than a person in tier 2, and a person in tier 2 will be able to see more logical connections than a person in tier 3. If you want to read more about this, see The Power and the Glory by Burgess Laughlin, particularly his concept of an "expert" in a philosophy.

Ayn Rand included a long list of recommended further reading at the end of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. It would probably be a good move to buy that book if you haven't already, then use the recommended sources to go further into the specific issues that interest you. Notable economists included in her list include Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises.

This is an old discussion, but I have a relevant comment. I subscribe to the Harry Binswanger Letter, which includes both a forum and a regular email sent out by Dr. Binswanger containing the best posts from the forum. The main difference I have noticed between this forum and HBL is that, on HBL, everyone is required by the rules to start with the assumption that the person they are talking to disagrees with them based on an honest mistake. People who are rude lose their posting privileges pretty quickly. If you compare that with the finger pointing evident even in this thread, it should be pretty easy to see why a major Objectivist would prefer to post there rather than here in their limited time, in addition to the other reasons people have pointed out.

On a related note, I'm currently taking a class in artificial intelligence, and one of the major problems in building a working AI is getting the computer to figure out all of the implications of the knowledge in its knowledge base. (There's no fundamental distinction between an AI and any other algorithm, by the way, it's just a subjective distinction based on how well the algorithm emulates human intelligence.) An AI's knowledge base consists of (1) facts about the world and (2) rules about how the world works. For example, an AI might know the following: Bob is hot. Bob is rich. Bob's favorite ice cream flavor is mint If a person is hot and rich, they will buy ice cream. If a person buys ice cream, they will buy their favorite flavor of ice cream Here, our facts about the world are 1, 2, and 3, and our rules about how the world works are 4 and 5. There are two main ways an AI might try to draw the conclusion that Bob will buy mint ice cream from these premises: forward chaining and backward chaining. In forward chaining, the AI starts with the given facts and tries to apply various combinations of rules to the facts until it finds a rule where the predicates in the antecedent match the predicates in the facts. Here, the AI would start with 1-3, then try to match the predicates in 4 and 5 to those facts until it starts making progress. The process in this case would be to match 1 and 2 to 4, then deduce a new fact ("Bob will buy ice cream") which it can then match to rule 5 together with fact 3. This would allow it to discover a new conclusion, namely that Bob will buy mint ice cream. In backward chaining, the AI starts with a query representing the conclusion to be derived and works backward through the knowledge base until it finds a derivation of that conclusion from the given facts and rules. That is, it would start with "Bob will buy mint ice cream" and try to match the predicates in that term to the predicates in the consequent of one of the rules. So it would first notice that the antecedent of rule 5 together with fact 3 would allow it to prove the conclusion it wants, then start looking for a way to prove the antecedent of rule 5, then succeed in doing so by going back through the antecedent of rule 4 to facts 1 and 2. This is pretty different from how humans reason, since we can't represent our knowledge as a simple list of clearly defined rules and facts like this, nor do we have the ability to search for implications as quickly and efficiently as a computer.

I intend to participate. I have a BA in philosophy and I am near the end of a BS in computer science.

The SEP article on rationalism and empiricism is a great introduction, and it is more precise and reliable than Wikipedia. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Eiuol, I think your point that people act according to their habits in lifeboat situations is probably correct with respect to lifeboat situations that occur unexpectedly and require rapid action. However, what would you say about lifeboat situations that are sustained over a long period of time, like living in a dictatorship?

I'm listening to a lecture course about the history of American philosophy, and according to one of the lectures Hegel's philosophy came to the United States in part by means of theology. Theology students would often travel to Europe and bring back the philosophical and theological ideas that were current there. One of the first major Hegelian works in the United States was by a theologian who was trying to show how God had allowed history to develop through the thesis - antithesis - synthesis pattern Hegel described. Theology has had a pretty big impact on intellectual life in the United States in general, not just in this case. The most important American philosopher of the 18th century was Jonathan Edwards, a theologian who wrote a treatise defending compatibilism about free will. Also, from The Ominous Parallels, p. 119: "During the nineteenth century it became a trend and then the rule for American students, especially in philosophy and theology, to spend a year or more in Germany absorbing the latest German culture. An army of American students absorbed it. They came home, and they repeated what they had learned. They repeated it throughout the country that had been founded on the ideals of an enlightened mind and man's inalienable rights." So, yes, philosophy and theology students, but prior to the second World War when people started immigrating from Germany to escape the collectivism.

The argument you are referring to is an application of the philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatism has been the dominant philosophy in the United States since the Civil War, so people often appeal to it without even realizing that they are taking a philosophical point of view. Pragmatism as developed by William James says that there are no absolute principles. We believe in the absolutes we do on the basis of our passional nature, which is irrational and inclines us to choose the premises that we do without our realizing it. This is pragmatism's explanation for why there have been so many different philosophies. This is why people feel like they can use the term "works" without explaining it, although they may never have heard of William James. The term "works" comes from our passional nature, which there is no point in elaborating further. This is also why they feel like they can defend their views on health care without applying an objective benchmark. A particular person who uses this argument might not realizing that he is appealing to pragmatism, so you might be able to persuade him to change his mind by pointing out that he needs a more principled approach. However, if someone is a committed pragmatist, it is very difficult to argue with him successfully, because they are so concrete bound.

Welcome to the forum. Just so you know, Ayn Rand was opposed to the practice of trying to convert your parents and explicitly warned Objectivists away from trying to do so in one of the Q&A sessions in Ayn Rand Answers. If you have the book, it's page 133-135. I will quote the first paragraph.

David Myers is a psychologist and the author of a very widely used introductory psychology textbook. He has written a book on how to become happy called The Pursuit of Happiness which provides concrete advice about how to become happy based on hundreds of empirical studies. In this post, I will summarize the chapter in that book dealing with fulfilling work and provide some integration of his points with Objectivist principles and values. To begin with, Myers notes that people who are unemployed demonstrate remarkably lower low being than people who have jobs. Even people who have mundane jobs are happier than people who don't have any job at all. However, it is better to have fulfilling work, and it is even better to work in an environment with supportive people. The psychological effects of fulfilling or unfulfilling work are especially pronounced in single people, who don't have a home life to counterbalance the positive or negative effects of their work life. This is consistent with the Objectivist view that morality requires productivity. Productivity contributes to our self esteem, which contributes to our overall well being. People who don't work don't experience themselves as productive, and therefore have lower self esteem and overall well being than people who work. Myers identifies three benefits that work can provide to one's psychological well being: a sense of identity, community, and purpose. Work can provide a sense of identity because it enables us to say that we are worthwhile as a person, because we contribute to society in a specific role. Work can provide a sense of community if we work with other people who are supportive of us. And work can add purpose to our lives by giving us a worthwhile central purpose in life. People who experience a sense of identity, community, and purpose in their work almost always say that they would continue to work even if they inherited a large fortune. Myers also says that work can provide a sense of personal control if we are in a position where we have some control over our hours and goals and are allowed some input into decisions. These are pretty clearly important benefits from an Objectivist perspective. An Objectivist gets a sense of identity from his work because productive work is a central value to him. A sense of community is also a legitimate benefit from an Objectivist point of view, because it is legitimate to want to have one's work valued by other people and achieve the psychological visibility that comes from working on a team toward a shared goal. And purpose is a central Objectivist value, so much so that Rand enshrined it in her slogan "reason, purpose, self esteem." Myers next explains an important psychological concept relevant to fulfilling work called flow. According to Myers, when our skills are too low or we don't have enough time to meet our challenges, we feel stressed and anxious. When our skills are too high for our challenges, we feel boredom. Between these states is a state called flow, where we perceive ourselves as having high skills and meeting high challenges that match our skills. When we are in flow, we are completely absorbed in the task at hand, and time passes without our noticing. Flow has been studied in a variety of different groups of people across the world, and psychologists have found that people who spend a lot of time in flow, meeting a series of successively more demanding challenges as their skills improve, develop higher self esteem. Flow is obviously relevant to the Objectivist ethics. For one thing, it provides confirmation of Rand's concept of "reason, purpose, self esteem," where rising self esteem causes and is caused by a series of increasingly demanding purposes. It is also relevant to Rand's view that people should be ambitious and continually expand their skill set and knowledge. So, to summarize: People who don't work have lower well being than people who work, and people who have fulfilling work are happier still. The main psychological benefits that we can get out of work are a sense of identity, community, purpose, and personal control. It is important to spend as much of our work time in flow as possible. The whole chapter is basically an extended presentation of evidence for the central tenet of the Objectivist ethics, "reason, purpose, self esteem." I hope you found this post useful, and I look forward to your thoughtful comments.

I agree that there are some similarities between labeling yourself and forming a concept. Strictly speaking, though, it's worth pointing out that the proper analogy is not forming a concept but applying a concept to a specific case. If I label myself an Objectivist, I have already formed the concept of an Objectivist previously and am now applying it to myself by a process of deduction. The process would go something like this: "An Objectivist is someone who agrees with the philosophy of Ayn Rand as expressed in her novels and non-fiction work. The main views expressed in her novels and non-fiction work are metaphysical absolutism, free will, reason, egoism, capitalism, etc. I agree with all of these views, or with the most significant ones at least. Therefore, I am an Objectivist." This is a deductive syllogism in the first form, if I am not mistaken. Why would someone not go through this process of reasoning? One possibility is that they don't have the major premise - they don't know what an Objectivist is. The other possibility is that they haven't put together the information about themselves to affirm the minor premise - they don't realize, or don't want to realize, that they affirm all of the views required to be an Objectivist.

Here's a relevant quote from ITOE, from the appendix on philosophy of science: Prof. B: Is the concept of "matter" a philosophical concept or a scientific one? AR: In the way we are using it here, as a very broad abstraction, it is a philosophical concept. If by "matter" we mean "that of which all the things we perceive are made," that is a philosophical concept. But questions like: what are different things made of? what are the properties of matter? how can you break it down? etc. - those are scientific problems.

No, maybe you're right.

I would add that developing good social skills in high school is important for your success in college, even before you get into the professional world. First, a lot of people make connections in college that help them get jobs later in life, and it will be harder to make those connections if you haven't been practicing your social skills. Second, it will be harder to get girls to go out with you in college if you don't have any practice talking to girls. For that matter, there are girls in college who will not go out with you if they find out you haven't had a girlfriend before. This is because there are relationship skills that you can only pick up if you've been in a relationship before, and a girl will prefer to date someone who already has those skills over someone who does not.

I would recommend Alain Wolf's course on Udemy. It's a thirty day series, you watch one video each day that teaches you a new social skill and then he gives you an exercise to give you some practice with it. It's a bit expensive, but the advice is consistently excellent, and he responds to questions if you send him one.